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[Odrion]

Fuck those guys! How dare they modify their own code for purposes of their choosing! They have no right! Fuck EA! etc..

Seems to me that you'd all be happier if you just ignore the whole fucking thing and find something else to do. I can literally hear the GAF blood pressure rising every time there's a new SimCity revelation.

Let it go, it is what it is. It's not the first time a reboot has fucked a franchise.

Spoiler

*cough* DMC *cough*

I was angry the first day, now I find it extremely amusing. As they say: tragedy in time becomes comedy.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

I think it's the sports games they keep churning out. Many of the people who buy/play the sports games aren't into the gaming scene and don't really pay attention to any drama as long as they get their Madden 2013.

Those games are big money-makers as they have a large audience and take little to develop.

and yet they let NBA get away, which to me is just baffling!

Madden probably isn't even that big outside the US, which leaves them with just Fifa. Meanwhile expenses are rising and competition is getting fiercer all around. All I see is EA losing ground on their own home fronts, so I have to assume casual is bringing in some serious bucks for them.

 

[Paches]

Haha, holy shit.

 

[BorkBork]

This game just keeps on giving.

 

[Bedlam]

I can't even imagine how often those guys must've thought "man this vidoc was a mistake" by now lol.

 

[YouEnjoyMySelf]

If a PC game exists, it can be hacked or cracked. If you say a game can't be cracked, someone will immediately go and prove you wrong. A more-PC (in more ways than one) Rule 34, if you will. That's Gies' big misunderstanding; the capacity and drive of PC players.

Now I wish that Rock Band Blitz was on PC for the same reason.

True, but with games such as WoW and Diablo 3 where a lot of things are done by the server, it can prove to be much more difficult than something like this. All someone needs to do now is figure out how to get saves working, if they haven't already.

 

[RedNumberFive]

Holy shit! I suppose it was inevitable.

 

[Kayhan]

 

[semiconscious]

SimCity used to be something magical, something visionary and special...

this could be said of a number of franchises. all to the credit of gamer/developers, who were given the room, time, & money to bring life to their visions. most of whom are now under the control of people who don't play games, aren't interested in 'gaming' itself, & are dealing with them strictly as established 'product', to be re-iterated over'n'over in ever more profit-inducing forms, until it doesn't work anymore...

 

[GavinGT]

Did someone within Maxis leak some of the source code? How else would we even acquire it?

 

[whitehawk]

I thought we already knew this? Kotaku did an article where they reported being kicked out of the game 20 minutes after they unplugged their Ethernet cable.

 

[pargonta]

I thought we already knew this? Kotaku did an article where they reported being kicked out of the game 20 minutes after they unplugged their Ethernet cable.

this illuminates the exact text of the programming code, and shows how it can be disabled simply.

 

[aeolist]

Did someone within Maxis leak some of the source code? How else would we even acquire it?

Read the first post, the .package files SimCity uses are the same ones they used for The Sims 3, which has been cracked.

Also a lot of the UI is written in Javascript, which would just be stored in notepad-readable .js files.

 

[notoriousKTR]

Did someone within Maxis leak some of the source code? How else would we even acquire it?

No. This code is located in the game files. Because SC2013 is packaged the same was as Sims3, it was easy to extract the code from the other stuff.

 

[Savitar]

You got to wonder how much is too much for any one company to handle, all this stuff would make many companies buckle and do everything they can to work with the consumer and earn back some of the trust but EA appears to be digging the bunkers to withstand the whole thing.

It's quite a sight really.

 

[RobertM]

It's not difficult, just fool the game into thinking a local server is the EA server. Any verification checks can also be spoofed.

Yup. It's fairly easy to make a local server with 127.0.0.1 ip. Maybe I should make a spoofer...

 

[bigdaddygamebot]

Well Cumpkin I love how I can battle it out with my friends and show the rest of our acquaintances which of us is the best. Especially showing them on facebook. I like this social aspect of SimCity ™ as it brings out the awesomeness of the interplay between the Sims ™ and SimCity ™. I'm going to buy that cool new tileset and show it off to my friends, YEAH! Being able to fire up Origin ™ and and jump into SimCity ™ for some great multiplayer action is why I always come back to the high quality, AAA, big blockbuster games of EA ™. Here's to us gamers ©!

Spoiler

kill me...

Nice try ya fuckin' shill!

Spoiler

Good try ya magnifcent bastard and fuckin shill. <3

 

[pompidu]

This is AMazing

 

[rac]

But JWong in the official thread said he played the game offline for two hours. Was he lying, or did he know about this code awhile ago?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=49878174&postcount=8759

Except he doesn't know how the game works. I played the game offline for 2 hours, and things just stop working after a certain point.

Issues start appearing like your city name disappearing, mayor name disappearing, debug text on Sims Quests, and the obvious no save when offline.

 

[TheGreyHulk]

but gies, it'll take a lot of work for maxis to get an offline mode implemented....

 

[FartOfWar]

Fuck those guys! How dare they modify their own code for purposes of their choosing! They have no right! Fuck EA! etc..

Seems to me that you'd all be happier if you just ignore the whole fucking thing and find something else to do. I can literally hear the GAF blood pressure rising every time there's a new SimCity revelation.

Let it go, it is what it is. It's not the first time a reboot has fucked a franchise.

Spoiler

*cough* DMC *cough*

DmC was brilliant, sorry.

 

[evangd007]

This game has probably sold very well, and I wouldn't expect EA to rethink its everything online and full of micro-transactions philosophy over this.

I don't think retail sales matters too much to EA with respect to Sim City. If the Sim City game-as-service fails, then they will go back to the drawing board. Unfortunately its probably too late to change Command & Conquer.

 

[10101]

No one in this thread is ever going to get a job as community manager for a big studio. Hope you are all happy.

Aww dang my master plan is unravelling before my eyes lol

Edit: beaten!

 

[bigdaddygamebot]

DmC was brilliant, sorry.

Underlined for accuracy.

 

[nbthedude]

Jeff Gerstman from Giant Bomb weighs in on this and other stuff:

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/gerstmann-takes-on-video-game-wrestling-madness/1100-4605/

For EA's part, it's still in the middle of an internet rage storm as enterprising modders keep finding ways to disconnect SimCity from its various limitations and disprove a handful of EA's official statements about the nature of the game. Is it offloading complex calculations to the remote servers? Nah, probably not. Does it have extreme issues with how it handles its population as individual Sims move from one part of the city to the other? Yeah, it sounds like it does.

When the internet mobs up and gets angry, it often overreaches and gets into some weird kind of rage land that no sane human would support. But when I look at all the stuff people have been uncovering about SimCity and set that against EA's statements about the game and its slightly condescending tone when attempting to address its detractors... at some point EA is just bringing more of this on itself. The tone of its responses ("I hate to disturb you when you&#8217;re playing SimCity") aren't helping them spin this into a positive thing.

Hopefully the people inside EA are taking all of this seriously and not just looking at numbers of cities created or sales figures while attempting to spin this all off internally as yet another example of "the internet's anti-EA bias." I'm sure it'd be pretty easy to lump this in with the Mass Effect 3 outcry and say "well, everyone's just trying to throw rocks at the throne" or something. There are clearly some lessons to be learned here... if EA is actually paying attention, that is.

This week's joystiq podcast talks about the disaster in their second segment as well.

So are Polygon literally the only deniers of how stupid and fucked EA's handling of this has been?

 

[mavs]

But JWong in the official thread said he played the game offline for two hours. Was he lying, or did he know about this code awhile ago?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=49878174&postcount=8759

He probably reconnected at some point without noticing, and the problems were caused by the busted/dying server

 

[Curufinwe]

DmC was brilliant, sorry.

Not nearly as good as DMC 3, either in gameplay or story, and hasn't sold nearly as well as DMC 4. It's an entirely different situation than Sim City, but Capcom have certainly fucked up the franchise.

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

this could be said of a number of franchises. all to the credit of gamer/developers, who were given the room, time, & money to bring life to their visions. most of whom are now under the control of people who don't play games, aren't interested in 'gaming' itself, & are dealing with them strictly as established 'product', to be re-iterated over'n'over in ever more profit-inducing forms, until it doesn't work anymore...

It's applicable in general, but it's REALLY applicable to SimCity, which is one of the oldest, possibly the oldest computer game franchise that has remained popular throughout the decades. (I realize it's been ten years since the last game but I still don't think it's a "resurrection" in the way that something like Fallout 3 was.)

It's from an era completely different from pretty much every franchise that is currently being milked to death. It was originally released at time when computers were just capable of doing something like this, though most people didn't realize it, and it took a genius game designer to try it. It was definitely a "look what computers can do!" game when it came out, and everyone who was anywhere from 5 to 50 at the time has fond memories of it. As Sharp said, the name "SimCity" was previously synonymous with the best potential for video games. There was a reason why it was on every school and library computer in the '90s.

It's really a terrible shame that it's all going so sour, so quickly.

 

[rac]

He probably reconnected at some point without noticing, and the problems were caused by the busted/dying server

That is even better. The problems he had weren't because he was still offline but because he managed to reconnect to EA's shit servers.

 

[KingItachi]

DmC was brilliant, sorry.

Sorry it was not.

 

[Teknoman]

I just hope nothing this insane happens with Battlefield 4.

 

[Rebel Leader]

Jeff Gerstman from Giant Bomb weighs in on this and other stuff:

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/gerstmann-takes-on-video-game-wrestling-madness/1100-4605/



This week's joystiq podcast talks about the disaster in their second segment as well.

So are Polygon literally the only deniers of how stupid and fucked EA's handling of this has been?

link to the podcast aswell please

 

[Wallach]

After this shit he should say that he has to eat his words, this is ridiculous. Maybe he's capable of admitting he was dead wrong but who knows..

It's not like he made an innocent mistake he was fucking straight up lying.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Holy shit EA must be going for worst company in the world...

 

[Mr. Luchador]

Just amazing. Can't wait for tomorrow's discovery.

 

[Dragon]

Arthur Gies vindicated by his constant trusting of EA. Seems like there's a lot of engineering work involved in changing an integer value...

 

[Rebel Leader]

 

[plutoknight]

I can't remember the last time I've seen a game blow up so spectacularly at launch. This is just incredible.

I'm personally waiting for the Gearbox/EA showdown that'll inevitably happen later this year.

The premise of the showdown is, of course, which company can screw the most people over? Gearbox might be going for a world record by screwing devs as much as consumers, but EA games sell more and reach farther!

 

[Binabik15]

It's pretty cool that he knows so much about game development in general (and the inner workings of this game in particular), and he's willing to share it with all of us!

He is also an expert chef who can squeeze sauce out of Durangos.

 

[ffdgh]

It's almost disturbing how new things keep turning up for this game lol.

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

I can't remember the last time I've seen a game blow up so spectacularly at launch. This is just incredible.

I think the closest analogy in terms of the profile and pedigree of the series is Ultima IX, which was a pretty spectacularly unplayable mess when it came out.

 

[RoKKeR]

It's almost disturbing how new things keep turning up for this game lol.

It's surprising, to say the least.

 

[RoKKeR]

I just hope nothing this insane happens with Battlefield 4.

There's a thread going on about this right now, and because BF is such a multiplayer centric game then I don't see it causing such an incredible amount of backlash. If you really look at it, BF3 on PC is an always-online game, even if you want to play SP.

The reason why the SimCity backlash is absolutely massive is because it is a SinglePlayer game that is being forced down our throats as an "always online, multiplayer" experience. Which it's not. I haven't once touched the so-called "integral" multiplayer aspects of SimCity.

Edit: Sorry for double post.

 

[QaaQer]

Because its stupid? But let the hate flow.

It is part of the site's policies that members are not allowed to question the existence of threads, and it is one of the great parts of this site, as things don't get burried in stupid megathreads. If a thread is useless or redundant, then it will either:

• drop of the front page in a matter of minutes, never to be seen again
• or, be deleted/locked by a mod

It has nothing to do with you, and you will be banned for threadshitting. If you don't like that, then leave.

 

[Toma]

It is part of the site's policies that members are not allowed to question the existence of threads, and it is one of the great parts of this site, as things don't get burried in stupid megathreads. If a thread is useless or redundant, then it will either:

• drop of the front page in a matter of minutes, never to be seen again
• or, be deleted/locked by a mod

It has nothing to do with you, and you will be banned for threadshitting. If you don't like that, then leave.

Besides, its not stupid that this thing is getting publicity, its important for the whole industry and every gamer. See a post I made earlier:

The problem is that EVEN if its fun (And my personal "fun factor" is seriously jeopardized by the fact that the AI is basically non-existant atm and works more like a vacuum cleaner), its the whole issue of every problem surrounding this launch. I mean sure, I feel sorry for single developers that had no choice but to go with whatever the management said. But at some point, people need to be able to say "ENOUGH". The big players in the industry are trying to get people to swallow anti-consumer methods step by step. And usually people swallow it.

This game shouldnt have been released a year too early. And people outright lied to consumers about why certain "features" are in this game. We shouldnt support companies lying to us or is that something you want even more to happen? By giving money to a company, we are saying "This is what we want" and that seems to be more of a reflex these days than a conscious decision.

 

[ebullientprism]

There's a thread going on about this right now, and because BF is such a multiplayer centric game then I don't see it causing such an incredible amount of backlash. If you really look at it, BF3 on PC is an always-online game, even if you want to play SP.

Nope. You can start up Origin in offline mode and play the SP of BF3 offline without any issues whatsoever.

Why would you want to play BF3 SP (offline or online) is another question.

 

[Septimius]

Just have to point out how awesome this is.

 

[phosphor112]

Lucy Bradshaw get your ass in here and explain yourse....

Oh wait.

She got force shutdown herself. :lol

 

[Des0lar]

How will all this bad news affect sales? It probably won't.

It's sad to say, but the people on this forum who are 'voting with their wallets' are probably/most likely a minority. A single piece of toilet paper against the mountain of shit. It'd be nice to see this on the tech portion of the news, but it won't.

EA will keep on counting that cash.

C.R.E.A.M.

Local radio stations here where I live have been pickin this story up and commented on how disappointed gamers are and how EA has fucked up. It will affect future sales, I have no doubt about that.

 

[LumpOfCole]

Hackers have proven that SimCity will still continue to generate press even if public relations are taken offline.