
EA Apologizes For SimCity Disaster, Says It Was “Dumb”.. - thegarside
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/09/ea-apologizes-for-simcity-disaster-says-it-was-dumb-and-offers-free-game-to-players/
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espadrine
I love PR-speak.

> Some people are still experiencing response and stability problems that
> we’re working fast to address.

We have redefined the word _fast_.

> The consensus among critics and players is that this is fundamentally a
> great game.

I know you'll play it, no matter how terrible your experience is.

> But this game is made to be played online.

This game is DRMed.

(And etched beneath in faint pencil:)

I expect that EA will focus on online games from now on. If you want offline
games, you'll have to rely on Minesweeper.

> We’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio.

DRMs ensure that you don't play a game for free. Since DRMs failed to work
this time, you get to play a game for free. Like Bill said, "As long as they
are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours."

Except for Mac users. We couldn't care less if we tried.

> SimCity is a GREAT game and the people who made it are incredibly proud.

Understandably, they're mad at us. We had ONE JOB and we failed to make the
log-in scale.

~~~
micampe
_> > Some people are still experiencing response and stability problems that
we’re working fast to address.

>We have redefined the word fast._

Sometimes I am really surprised by the responses to companies here. It seems
like people never had a job or forgot the experience. Companies are not
abstract entities that make things happen and only do PR: people work there.

A large portion of HN is likely engineers of some sort or someone very close
to them and yet you don't believe EA's engineers are _scrambling_ , maybe
pulling all nighters to fix this. All you see is PR being slow to respond. PR
are not the ones working fast to fix the issue.

(I don't work at EA and I don't know anyone who does, I don't even play games)

~~~
lucian1900
It should be trivial to make a patch with an offline mode, if they've followed
good network programming practice.

[edit] "It should be relatively easy" might be more accurate. It would not be
good engineering to create a single-player mode that doesn't degrade
gracefully when the network connection is absent.

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micampe
_> It should be trivial_

This is another statement that always surprises me when said by an engineer
instead of an exec.

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epo
In both cases it is a statement made by someone who doesn't understand what
they are talking about. (EDIT) to avoid being needlessly trite: because if
someone does know what they are talking about then they would say it _is_
trivial. "It should be trivial" means you are just making stuff up.

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blaabjerg
Honestly I think people should stop saying anyone bought this game at all.
They leased it. At some point in the future, EA is going to decide that the
cost of running the servers outweighs the benefits of keeping them online, and
they're going to shut them off.

Have EA made any promises regarding the expected life of this game?

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laumars
You raise a very interesting point.

I still play the original SimCities from time to time. It's sad to think that
modern games might not be around in a decade or two for us to enjoy - even if
just for reminiscing.

~~~
crististm
Indie games might still be around even then.

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blaabjerg
There's an interesting comment [1] by a fella called kodemunkee at TechCrunch.
Is there any truth to this?

> This is definitely an "unmitigated disaster". What nobody's seemed to
> realize about EA's offer to give away a free Origin game is this: EA can
> write off the games they give away in dealing with this debacle as a tax
> write-off at full "market" value (on the Origin market, anyhow) even though
> they cost only pennies to deliver to you. In addition, the $20 coupon for
> another Origin game that was given to those who bought the game through
> Origin will also be used as a write-off against the $50+ the game went
> against. If we assume that the value of the games that they will offer for
> their "apology" will be around $35-40, then they will have effectively
> written off the entire purchase price of SimCity in "promotional" and
> "apology" give-aways, thus turning the aforementioned "unmitigated disaster"
> into EA's most profitable quarter ever. This is not just consumer fraud,
> it's tax evasion.

[1]: <http://fyre.it/QUB0pP.4>

~~~
blocking_io
If by interesting you mean 'boring conspiracy theory'. Even if EA were the
most evil company in the world, sacrificing a valuable franchise in order to
marginally improve this quarters profit would still make no sense.

~~~
blaabjerg
I'm not saying they fucked up the SimCity launch on purpose, don't be
ridiculous. I'm asking if they can indeed write off the full retail price of
the games they give away.

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mtgx
The only reasonable apology is to end the always-on connection DRM, and update
the game to work without it. Anything less than that I see an insult to their
customers.

~~~
georgespencer
This isn't to do with the always-on DRM. EA drastically underestimated the
number of players who would want to play the game, and they don't have
sufficient server capacity. (This has happened in the past at peak times with
games like World of Warcraft, EVE, etc.)

A proportional response would be to allow users to refund the game, since this
is a quality issue and is clearly out of the players' control; and to rapidly
expand their server capacity until they have enough for everyone.

(I'm not an advocate for DRM, just proportionality.)

~~~
kaonashi
Of course it's to do with it. If it had a traditional single-player
architecture, there would be no issues at all.

~~~
georgespencer
You're failing to draw a distinction between always-on DRM and multiplayer
server capacity. Look at what you just said:

> Of course it's to do with [DRM]. If it [was a single player game], there
> would be no issues at all.

The two are unrelated. If it was a single player game we wouldn't be having
these issues... because it wouldn't need server capacity to play, which is
nothing to do with DRM. It could still have always-on DRM.

~~~
efdee
Fact is that DRM is the real reason why the game is heavily multiplayer. Older
versions were always single player and there is no reason they couldn't at
least have implemented this mode in the new game other than having an excuse
to put some of the logic on a server to thwart piracy. And that is what is
causing the current problems.

~~~
shadowfox
> Fact is that DRM is the real reason why the game is heavily multiplayer

Perhaps. I had be interested in your sources for this fact though. Otherwise
it feels like opinion being stated as fact.

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zyb09
Am I the only one who thinks people are overreacting? Seems like the whole
Internet is on fire over a game, even HN is infected. Servers had a little
trouble, but what I'm hearing it's stable now. So why not just wait or buy the
game a few days later and be fine?

And if you're really convinced the online requirement is just glorified DRM
and EA is evil anyway, don't buy the game. Problem solved! There are really
more important things to worry about.

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ry0ohki
It's mainly the nature of the game. With World of Warcraft you kind of know
what you are getting into. But pretend you are just a dude walking around
BestBuy, you pick up SimCity on launch day to bring back fond childhood
memories. You take it home, install it on your computer, and it basically does
not work (with no explanations besides it can't connect and sometimes worse
then that) for 4 days. It was just an unbelievably bad launch for something
that doesn't really use online that much in the end.

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darkchasma
The problem wasn't a capacity planning issue, the problem was putting DRM in
the game. Period. This is the message they aren't getting, and luckily this
time I was too busy to buy a copy, so I wont.

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ihsw
People don't care about DRM, and if EA hadn't had capacity issues then there
wouldn't have been any complaints about DRM.

It's really depressing but that's how it is, and if you think otherwise then
you're deluded.

~~~
darkchasma
I am a people, and I care.

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jamespitts
This won't satisfy the user base. People can get their city-building fix from
other sources and EA knows this (and in a way the network requirement of
SimCity is hopium that this game can act more like the facebook city builder
games).

It seems unlikely and would be a huge development investment, but the best
thing for EA & their shareholders is to do a 180 and change the game to
single-player w/o DRM.

I wonder if the engineers have prepared ahead of time for a DRM-less version
(knowing of the potential for the fiasco).

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clarkdave
Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5347289>

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ajuc
Gaming business is similar to narcobusiness in some regards. No matter the
experience customers NEED to have their dose.

