Sim City (2013) lowest rated game on Amazon ever (1.2 outta 5, 2600 reviews)

[Perpetual Change]

https://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Arts-41018ted-Edition2-SimCity/dp/B007VTVRFA

Holy crap.

EA just keep doing stuff like this. When are they gonna learn that forcing people to be on their servers to play a single player game is freakin' annoying?

[Chino]

About a year ago I swore I would never buy or support another EA product... shit like this is exactly why I've stuck to it.

[Nick]

I'm pretty much against any type of software/game/anything that has mandatory cloud anything. It should be a feature, but at the end of the day I should always be able to have software on hand to handle things locally.

[Chino]

I should be able to play something I paid for despite whether or not an internet connection is available. Not to mention, if everything is server based, the day will come where your game no longer exists.

[Nick]

And as far as anything with over 1000 reviews that has to be the lowest average of any product I would think.

[snapple]

I will never touch an EA product again.

[Perpetual Change]

I'm pretty much against any type of software/game/anything that has mandatory cloud anything. It should be a feature, but at the end of the day I should always be able to have software on hand to handle things locally.

I should be able to play something I paid for despite whether or not an internet connection is available. Not to mention, if everything is server based, the day will come where your game no longer exists.

Unfortunately, DRM has ruled that out.

You don't "own" your games; that would imply you have the right to burn, copy, or sell them. You pay for a license to play them.

[El Barto]

Last I saw, Amazon had discontinued it. I guess that's why this is Ed 2.

We're seeing this more and more. Hell, Steam isn't much better, with it's constant need to update everything. I've got a few games I purchased on Steam (which for content delivery is still aces) that I only play cracked versions of. I gave up on L4D2 6 months ago when it wanted to repair the data files, yet again. Easier to DL an offline version and be done with it once and for all. And that's exactly what will happen with SimCity 5. In a week, there'll be a cracked offline version. Everybody will steal it to get a game that actually works, and then EA will blame piracy for the craptacular sales.

[snapple]

Steam at least does the sales. And, you can always start steam in offline mode (when you do have a connection) and not have to worry about it.

[Chino]

I'm pretty much against any type of software/game/anything that has mandatory cloud anything. It should be a feature, but at the end of the day I should always be able to have software on hand to handle things locally.

I should be able to play something I paid for despite whether or not an internet connection is available. Not to mention, if everything is server based, the day will come where your game no longer exists.

Unfortunately, DRM has ruled that out.

You don't "own" your games; that would imply you have the right to burn, copy, or sell them. You pay for a license to play them.

And unfortunately, that's why EA is losing customers left and right. I won't even buy a PS3 EA title just out of principle.





What they need to do is include a secure ID unit with each purchase which you need to activate like once a week instead of every time you want to play.


I game on my laptop and am often times in places without a connection.

[El Barto]

What they need to do is include a secure ID unit with each purchase which you need to activate like once a week instead of every time you want to play.

No. What they need to do is accept that piracy will always happen to a set degree, and that DRM does nothing but punish the people who pay for the game. Release the freaking game without any and let people play the damn thing.

BTW, this is only partially about deterring piracy. It's equally about eliminating the used game market, which is actually more infuriating to me.

[Chino]

BTW, this is only partially about deterring piracy. It's equally about eliminating the used game market, which is actually more infuriating to me.

Yeah, that really rubs me the wrong way too.

[Chino]

BTW, this is only partially about deterring piracy. It's equally about eliminating the used game market, which is actually more infuriating to me.

Yeah, that really rubs me the wrong way too.

[snapple]

Chino, you're fucking up bro.

[LieLowTheWantedMan]

I hear there's also problems with the map size. Who wants to place bets on how long it'll take before they release the DLC for larger maps you have to pay more money for?

[ehra]

The rage over developers/publishers trying to cut down on used games seems like the silliest of the gaming controversies, and gamers get pissed over some pretty ridiculous shit. The argument is usually something like "Games are too expensive as they are (outside of Steam sales and indie games), if you cut out used games then I'll just stop buying as many games, so fuck you guys!" as if the publishers/developers ever saw a cent from a used game purchase anyway. "You better stop this or I'll keep not giving you any money" is about as empty a threat as you can get.

As for the Sim City fiasco, what else is new. We've known for ages the game was going to require connecting to their servers. It was obvious those servers were going to shit themselves. Everyone knows what EA does. People still bought it then cried about it afterwards. Sim City having the lowest product rating won't matter at all because most people just don't give a shit enough to actually change their buying/gaming habits, they'll just rage about it for a bit on the internet and expect that to be enough to get EA to decide they'll stop doing things that make them fuck tons of money.

None of the complaining will change anything, the game is still going to sell like wtf which is all that matters. EA knew going in that this this sort of thing would cause a shitstorm. Big publishers/developers don't want to just release single games that you pay for once and are done with, they'd rather provide a perpetual "service" that brings in revenue regularly. If doing so means they have to suffer through a bunch of empty threats and QQ then they'll gladly accept that trade-off.

[rumborak]

I downloaded "Real Racing 3" on my phone the other day. Well, it's a free download, and the game is insanely good. The way they make the money off it is essentially by making it impossible to get anywhere competitive without buying upgrades to your cars with real money. I read an article where someone calculated how much money you would have to spend in order to finish the game (i.e. own all cars in the game). $500. Nice.

[ehra]

The Sims 3 is $30, add in all of the DLC and you get another $420. That Train Simulator series has like $2,000+ in DLC on top of the $60 for the game itself.

[GuineaPig]

EA is killing all my favourite franchises with simplified gameplay, DLCs, and fucking DRM.

But whatever.  The new Sim City looks laughably inferior to Sim City 4 and its massive amount of community content. 

[jasc15]

I'm glad I left the video game market ca. 1999.  The only thing I have currently hooked up to my TV is SNES, for which some games were purchased at Funco Land

Also:

Yeah, that really rubs me the wrong way too.

[Super Dude]

Hopefully online nerd protest is met by a sharp decline in sales.

[Ben_Jamin]

Hahaha....this is too funny at the irony. It's a Sim game about building your own city, and since today is all about connecting with others online. Them making it a mandatory thing isn't really a problem at all. It's actually smart marketing, because they know people will still blindly buy.

[Perpetual Change]

And as far as anything with over 1000 reviews that has to be the lowest average of any product I would think.

Now 1.2 out of 2500+ reviews

[El Barto]

The world's full of people who'll blindly buy anything with SIM in the title, and they're going to buy this regardless of how annoying it is.  However, there's also a market segment that buys good stuff, or things that might interest them. When you pull some shit like this, you're safe in getting the first group's money, but that's about all you'll get. This could easily cost them 10-15%, and I suspect that if you're an EA shareholder, that's pretty damned important; at least it should be. I imagine that in the video game industry, expanding your market is absolutely crucial.

Furthermore, by pulling something like this, you're opening the door nice and wide for somebody else to come along and grab that market share. At this point, I don't think anybody's going to be able to do something SIM related better than Maxis; they kind of wrote the book on it. But if Maxis/EA take their customers for granted, a new franchise won't necessarily have to be as good to make up for SIM's shortcomings.

In the end, EA will sell this as a success story. The 10-15% market share they didn't get they'll write off to piracy. However, over the long haul, it might well be problematic for them. Other companies are doing just fine despite piracy, and EA continues to rest on safe, established franchises under the faulty assumption that the same people will always be there. Bad move. EA's a publicly traded company, remember. Disappointing sales numbers for a flagship title is the sort of thing that can really assrape a company to death.

[yorost]

The Sims 3 is $30, add in all of the DLC and you get another $420. That Train Simulator series has like $2,000+ in DLC on top of the $60 for the game itself.

That makes more sense to me.  You buy some DLC and it keeps it more exclusive for you as people would pick and choose what they want.  That's assuming the $2000 worth of content is focused on customization.  I don't see overall $$ on DLC as important, what's more important is the $$ expected from an individual game.  For instance, if they offer 100 avatars at $1, that $100 total is misleading, they're offering a choice of 100 options at $1.  Anyone who has to be a DLC completionist, well, that's their own stupid problem.  The only ones that bother me are story elements or other pieces that are  essential to the base game.

[Phantasmatron]

I kind of hate myself for this, but I desperately want to buy it anyway.  I've been waiting for a worthy follow-up to Sim City 4 for years.  Sim City Societies was not cutting it.

This game looks awesome and sounds like it could be cool, but I don't want to buy it and then have it not work.  But, in a moment of weakness, I may still give in.

Maybe I'll be able to hang on long enough for them to fix most of the server issues, because the fact that I can't save games to my hard drive isn't a big deal for me.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

[Super Dude]

Derp. Please don't quote my old post, I feel retarded for not actually having read the damn thing.

[JayOctavarium]

[cramx3]

 

Is the game really that bad or is this all an outlash at DRM?

[ehra]

Less the DRM / forced multiplayer specifically and more the fact that the servers have been shitting the bed for the past few days and people can't play. It's going to blow over like a week from now (assuming they get their act together) and everyone will forget about how much they hate EA once the next installment from a big franchise gets announced (I guess we're going to hear more on Dragon Age 3 soon?).


I've heard a few people saying the game itself is pretty good, but I've seen some other things that make me go wtf. Something that doesn't get mentioned much is that the game auto syncs/saves your city, meaning you can't just save your game, release some disaster to watch it all blow up, then load your game again. Any mistake you make you're stuck with.

[robwebster]

BTW, this is only partially about deterring piracy. It's equally about eliminating the used game market, which is actually more infuriating to me.

Yeah, that really rubs me the wrong way too.

Pow!

I don't much care for a lot of video gamers' hissy fits, and review-bombing tends just to paint gamers as immature children, (and it's an accurate if not flattering self portrait,) but EA's behaviour, in this case, has punished the consumer in the name of corporate dick-swinging. I still think it's churlish, but it's drawn my attention to what, I think, is an important issue. I loved SimCity as a kid, I was completely enthralled by it, but my interest dropped in seconds after reading this thread.

I would also point out, though, that a lot of developers have put a lot of time into making a game that will, for many of them, have been a labour of love, and I think this kind of shit probably does more to put well-meaning developers out of jobs than it does to wound EA. Obsidian, in the last couple of years, had to make lay-offs for the sake of a single review point on MetaCritic. Nonetheless, I recognise that this isn't half as petty a crusade as a lot of them I've seen lately. I question the method, and fear that it's not harming the right people, but agree that a point needs to be very firmly made, and regrettably can't think of any better ways to make it.

[El Barto]

Is the game really that bad or is this all an outlash at DRM?

From what I've read, the game is actually very good. It's just that a lot of people haven't been able to play it.

Also, it's losing some points for being muliplayer only. Part of the current clusterfuck is that they used it's multiplayer component as a selling point for the always-on internet connection, even though plenty of people just want single player gaming, and then to try and get the servers to not shit all over the people who bought the silly thing, they've had to disable a whole lot of the multiplayer functionality. 

[ehra]

I would also point out, though, that a lot of developers have put a lot of time into making a game that will, for many of them, have been a labour of love, and I think this kind of shit probably does more to put well-meaning developers out of jobs than it does to wound EA.

If EA fired a bunch of people from Maxis and those people decided to start a Kickstarter for some kind of Sim City clone that doesn't require connecting through official servers they'd get their funding on, like, day 1.

[robwebster]

I would also point out, though, that a lot of developers have put a lot of time into making a game that will, for many of them, have been a labour of love, and I think this kind of shit probably does more to put well-meaning developers out of jobs than it does to wound EA.

If EA fired a bunch of people from Maxis and those people decided to start a Kickstarter for some kind of Sim City clone that doesn't require connecting through official servers they'd get their funding on, like, day 1.

Probably, but that's not a particularly realistic scenario. It's not like EA would obliterate Maxis, firing all the staff in one fell swoop, and a new company called Naxis would rise immediately from the ashes - more likely, it'd be a cocktail of scattered gameplay designers, graphic artists, etc. Never a full complement. Just a selection of the least crucial people, who they won't be able to afford if they don't make their targets, which are measured on both profit and acclaim, and behaviour like this threatens to eat into both.

Plus, they've just spent X number of years making a new SimCity game. They've said what they wanted to say, and got fired for it! I agree that DRM's shit, but imagine being the person whose career stops in its track for a game they did a pretty damned good job on. EA's behaviour isn't fair, but while the gamers' reaction makes its point, and makes it strongly, I'm not convinced this is laser-targetted at the people they're trying to harm. It's a hamfisted response to a rather more delicate problem.