Given the two hour wait I had to talk to a billing advisor to try and buy SimCity yesterday, people are still buying this game in their droves. The problem is that there is no incentive for EA to listen to their customers - the monopoly that they have on many of the best franchises allows them to act in such a petulant and anticompetitive manner.
I hate to be the one to say this, but I really can't see this issue being resolved without regulation.
Let's see how long that lasts. It sounds like this time around is different from being unable to cancel subscriptions, or a multiplayer server going down - people who bought the game at release actually cannot play it, or encounter major functionality breaks while doing so.
I know that it may be unlikely, but I do hope that this affects their bottom line. EA is a toxic company inside and out.
It could last quite a while. Look at the COD franchise. I was a big fan of COD4. They ignored their community for a long time and each new edition is still selling like hotcakes.
Regarding your comment of toxicity inside---when was this? Is this from personnel experience? Reason I ask is that 'toxic' is counter to my experience while working for them. Had a great time working with an equally great team. No pointy hairs in sight. That however was in 93 and things may well have changed.
1993? Probably fair to say a lot has changed in the last 20 years! I don't really follow EA closely, but even so they have a poor image (of what it's like internally.) Google "EA spouse" for a start, the resulting material presents them in a very poor light, even in the (poor) context of the games industry.
1993 EA has nothing to do with EA from 1996 onwards...
EA screwed Origin (that then they already owned, just read stuff about development of Ultima 8 and 9... there are lots of documents about how executive meddling made U8 a meh game, and U9 a totally ruined game), then bought and ruined Westwood, and so on.
Also as the time passed they got more and more problems with employees. Then we had crazy shit, like when EA closed a studio in LA, and people found out that the studio had more middle managers than grunts, and this is why the studio could not decide what to do, it simply had so much people giving orders and so few people doing, that doing stuff was impossible.
Can you elaborate on what happened in '96? EA have been on my "pirate their games if you really MUST see them yourself" list for a decade at least. However, I wasn't really a gamer back in '93-'96, so I don't know how they used to be and how they changed.
I never tried to track what happened exactly, or why.
But their games back then start to suffer from lots of executive meddling, with EA interfering more and more on the artistry of their game authors.
My best guess it is related to the launch of Playstation in late 1995, spurring a race for 3D games and FMV games, requiring much more money than before, and thus requiring more "risk management."
I've been with an EA studio for the last five months and met with people from a dozen other EA studios and like you toxic is not a word I would use to describe the EA I have seen. Quite the opposite
"That however was in 93 and things may well have changed."
There's your problem. At some point EA started buying up studios to take the IP and fire the employees. Then they went on a micro purchase bender and got rid of any idea of respecting the customer.
> So pay with credit card, then if someone pulls this crap call your bank and file a "product not as advertised/doesn't work" complaint ?
If you try this with Steam, they flag you for fraud and shut down your without recourse. All previously bought games are lost.
If you try this with Amazon, they flag you for fraud and shut down your account without recourse. Your previously bought e-books are automatically deleted from all your devices.
Or do what most tech savvy people on this forum who know about all of these standard launch day problems should be doing IMO. Wait a few weeks until after launch for things to calm down, monitor the status updates on the website and when the scalability issues are resolved then buy the game and happily play with minor problems for the next 5 years.
That said, it's going to be kinda funny if this was simply a minor bug that was discovered when scale went up to a few hundred BETA-testers to a couple million players. Maybe whatever load-testing code they had written that said they were good-to-go missed a single (or few) "insignificant" functions that ended up, because of this bug, over-running the server.
I certainly don't like EA's DRM practices and some of their other practices, but now that I'm another day into the future, I could easily see this happening to any company as well-used as them.
Addendum: Startups that claim they don't/wouldn't have these sorts of problems are probably because their load comes slowly, steadily, and these problems are caught early, or refactored out for efficiency, and the developers miss the potentially catastrophic results. When you get hit by a LOAD of traffic all at once, or other similar thing, bad things happen.
See: Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Half Life 2: Deathmatch
This is not a realistic option. I'm not going to abandon my quite large collection of games - some of which I play weekly to say in touch with distant family - and then start the lengthy, costly and time-consuming process of suing a company that lives on the other side of the Earth.
The cost of Sim City is literally half an hour of consultancy work. This means the lawsuit would cost me more than I could hope to gain from it, and I would only be doing it to spite the publisher.
If that is my goal, it is a more efficient use of my time to accept the sunken cost, give some negative reviews, and badmouth the publisher.
Disputing a card transaction has always resulted in a ban on Origin. But it has also always resulted in a ban on Steam as well. Ostensibly for the reason of card fraud and fraudulent accounts.
Note: I'm referring to in the US here, I'm unsure of the legality of doing that in the EU.
But in this case it's not the transaction itself that's being disputed. That person wants to return the game because it has a defect. Returning defective goods is not the same as disputing the transaction, is it? The vindictive support worker implied this himself when he said the ban was within his discretion to use as a means to close this support inquiry.
You're right, those are different things. The article doesn't make the distinction, but in the screenshot the user says, "I can call my bank and have the refund done that way."
The refund policy is nothing new to online game stores (though I do not like it). What is new here is that they publicly offered refunds, an offer which they did not intend to honour.
I didn't decide to chargeback yet. If I do and I see the same responses from origin support I will at least file a complaint with the Ohio Attorney General. Although in the past it did me no good.
As far as blogging-can-help goes, I've had my tweets favorited by @TWCClassAction after posting something about how they demonstrated that they were storing my password in plain text. FWIW.
It's still not fair. We should have consumer laws in place to protect this. You shouldn't lose an entire library of games you paid for because EA refused to refund you for a broken product.
A very bad practice - either don't issue a statement or honour it. Am sure as the story creates some noise, the user may get a refund, but not all of them. Sad.
"if you regrettably feel that we left you down, you can of course request a refund for your order."
As far as I know, they didn't state they would proceed with the request, only that you can "request" a refund. I can ask for the moon, it doesn't mean I'll get it.
Everything about that statement is actually pretty nasty, "if you regrettably feel that we left you down" is the equivalent of "I'm sorry your face got hurt by my hand"
This is the bigger issue. Gamers will complain about DRM and games being unplayable. Then they will be camping out for the next DRM ruined game. They will complain about it for a few weeks. Rinse. Repeat.
There's no reason to believe "gamers who complain about DRM" and "gamers camping out for the next DRM ruined game" are the same people. I'm in the first set and not the second, for instance. And the second set generally outnumbers the first, until the companies go a bit too far like this.
There is some overlap of those people. Some gamers will stick to it, but most wont. Look at all of the COD boycots. Once everyone's fiends started giving in then they wanted to play with them. I won't ever buy a COD game again. I'm thinking of swearing off all EA games. It doesn't matter though because millions of people will buy the new sports games and shooters every year.
Here's the thing. If people don't buy the game because of DRM then EA execs see this as "no one will ever buy a city sim". So a bunch of people who did buy the game doing chargebacks seems like it sends a better message. It says "I wanted this game for so long I pre-ordered. After I couldn't play due to DRM I wanted a refund."
Yup. People who preordered (like myself) want to play this. The DRM is restrictive and sucks, but I was hoping EA learned from Blizzard in this instance.
If you just don't buy it, EA will assume everyone pirated the game and cancel any future SimCity games... then we end up stuck in a DRM-filled loop forever. Requesting a refund is far more productive from a feedback perspective.
If the game is as they say it is and can't be played without the server, due to critical game logic being done there, I don't think they can get away with the pirating excuse as easily this time.
What seems like the obvious solution to me: let EA stop making city sims if they're bad at it, and fire all the ex-Maxis staff who they put on them. And then, let some other company get into the city-sim market if they think there's demand, and then hire all those same staff for their expertise.
Or does EA now hold all the patents on drawing roads and zoning buildings onto an isometric tilemap? :)
It's a long term strategy. If EA never made another Sim City game, eventually, eventually, someone else would. A Sim City game with a different name, sure. But a Sim City game.
I definitely with the strategy you bring forward. Just let the Sim-City franchise (it is only a name at this point, Will Wright and the majority of original Maxis crew are out), any other studio can get a better game with less stupid DRM.
Cities XL tried the same thing EA was pulling. Their launch was also a debacle, everyone got mad at them, and they had to shut all their online servers down for lack of money, leaving people with a functional single-player game but a fraction of the functionality they had anticipated (for example: no railroads, subways, or anything like that.)
Which is a bit of a shame, since _City Life_ (the predecessor) was an okay game.
Plenty of good building games around from the 90s to today.
Gool Ol' Games offers plenty of classics if you haven't played them. Ceasar 3, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Pharaoh / Cleopatra, Stronghold Crusader... all DRM-free and less than $10 each.
Dwarf Fortress is free as well with an awesome following. If you can get over the ASCII / tileset thing, its a good game.
Well, that's awesome if you're into that, but personally I like games that leverage the abilities of modern graphics card. I'm not afflicted with a lot of nostalgia, though, either.
That would be an interesting strategy. Too bad they are banning accounts now if you try that. But I think if SimCity doesn't sell well, EA will know why. There's too much talk about this online. They know the DRM has probably irreperably hurt the future sales of the Simcity game.
A good strategy for dealing with EA might be to use a separate card (disposable prepaid debit cards?) for each game order, minimizing the risk of collateral damage if you're banned because of a chargeback. Of course, if they find out you're using multiple accounts, they will ban all of them anyway.
It would be nice if we didn't have to treat game companies as adversaries like this.
I am all for getting your money back, whether it is a refund or chargeback/whatever via the bank. But I feel as though if it is some sort of chargeback that your account SHOULD be banned as you don't want the game any more.
of course, if you actually do that (even though it IS a good idea), they can just ban you, departing you from the keys to any games you have with them.
Remember, don't cross EA, it's only through their glowing generosity that they allow you to use some of the programs on your computer.
If you don't have an EA horror story at this point, you don't regularly play video games.
After BF3 and Diablo 3 I learned my lesson, and I will not be fooled into thinking "now its better" by the newest hottest game.
My general advice is to ignore all EA games until they either change their ways(lol ya rite) or die.
Also remember that not only do they love to fuck up a launch, but they also love to discontinue games with online components to screw everyone who bought them, and a lot of these games are on current platforms (360) or feature somewhat recent IP (some bf3 item in there).
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0L266ui...
Sims 3 (an EA game) is also known to be hampered by its DRM, though it's not in the "always online" category. It's one of those games where pirated copies with the DRM code deactivated run better than the version you get on the disc.
EA is such a bad publisher with really bad attempt to tight up their customer base through various DRM scheme that it is surprising it is not a academical example of a business not deserving their market share. Although Ubisoft seems to be a serious contender for the first place, in this league.
Personally I have refused to use their Origin market place from the start, as I do not support market fragmentation when it comes to electronic delivery service on a single plateform (Windows PC in this case). This and the really poor customer experience I have had with them in the last 10 years.
That's not his call, or anyone else's, but that of the market as a whole. There are few if any artificial barriers to success for a prospective competitor, except for their own unbridled greed and indifference to customer service.
In the technology sector, the greatest success stories have emerged not when one company executes flawlessly, but when one company executes competently in an environment where all of the other competitors act like barking idiots. You can't even count the number of times this has happened, but citing Microsoft, Google, and Apple should be enough to get the point across.
That's what's happening with Valve, IMHO. It's not that they are perfect... but when your competition is Electronic Arts, it's hard not to look good.
When I am talking about market fragmentation, I was referring to the electronic distribution market: I mean that a distribution platform that has a lesser offer but has exclusive (permanent one) because of a tied up with a specific publisher is very restrictive. I wouldn't have problem if, in this case, Valve and EA could agree to allow reselling of title through their respective distribution system.
Imaging that, going to your local super market (ASDA for an example) you could not find a major brand of cereals (Kellogs for the sake of argumentation). And that you would have to go to a direct competitor to find it (Tesco in this case). This is a fairly strait forward hurdle against a free market.
I don't think it's necessarily bad to have a few different distributors, after all it was not so long ago that people would get their meat and vegtables from different shops for example.
Someone who buys their games based on the principle that they should get their moneys worth within a few months of the purchase could easily overlook some bugs at the beginning.
People that spend $20 or $40 to go to a movie for 2 hours can't be that worried about maximizing the value they extract from a $60 game. I do look at it from the standpoint of not wanting games to work like this, but I can see how someone might not care much, especially if things smooth out soon.
I tend to agree. I haven't purchased an EA title in, well, years. It's almost a little hard to sympathize with these people that preorder the games. I mean, reading that transcript made me angry, yes, and I may be employing a faulty "blame the victim" mentality right now, but jesus, this cycle happens during every EA release. People should vote with their wallets. They know EA will treat them poorly, and yet they enter that relationship over and over again.
Maybe it's just the fact that I'm getting older, but I will happily choose spite over entertainment. I disagree with the companies practices, than that is that. No sale. This goes for all things.
Honestly, I'm even getting a little wary of Steam. They too share EAs account banning or a chargeback. Where else do we allow a company to destroy our goods by exercising our rights as consumers? It's maddness! Some people's steam libraries are easily worth a $1k or more. What gives them the right to take away what we've paid for?
I just don't know if it's worth supporting this kind of business model anymore. Even if that means I just don't get to play the games I want to anymore. Following the steam example, Gabe is getting up there in years. He's not going around forever. When the new CEO comes in, are they going to stay a private enterprise, will they still "focus on the customer first?" If any of that changes, you suddenly have a massive investment teetering on the goodwill of a company.
The market is certainly full of good titles that don't require this kind of BS. I'm currently backlogged to shit with enough titles to last me several years.
Easily. You claim the company didn't deliver the product as ordered and is refusing to refund your money. That's what chargebacks are for.
That said, chargebacks aren't a blanket get out of jail free card. Some CC plans offer consumer protection insurance, which goes above and beyond simple chargebacks.
Be careful - if you have bought any other games on Origin, you will lose those too if you do a chargeback and they ban your account. You are not just losing SimCity, you are losing anything you have bought on the same account.
Can they get a chargeback on those games as well? Or how is that not some form of theft? He bought the previous games, and the company forcefully removed them from him and keeps his money.
I'm assuming the EULA says something to the effect of, "you're paying for a license to use the software, not to purchase a copy. You own nothing and we can void your permission at any time".
Many credit companies would not let you to contest transactions beyond certain limits (90 days? don't remember) so with old games that probably won't work. Not sure if any of them provide warranties for digital goods... Worst case one may try one's luck in small claims court, though what would be the result is anyone's guess - there's certainly language in EULA saying you're not getting any money back but that may or may not be legally true.
Yes, I believe this user threatened to do so. He was advised that contesting the "no refund" policy (presumably via a chargeback) would result in his Origin account being banned.
If you've got a dozen other games, that'd be a big hit.
That may be true. But 5000 small claims suits would be devastating to their bottom line. Unless they no-show, they have to have a lawyer representing them at each one.
Considering how litigious America can be, I'm surprised EA and the other majors have not been slapped with a lawsuit. Under the Uniform Commercial Code, the product fails at least the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
I fairly certain you can't just disclaim things like that. It's similar to adding illegal clauses to a contract - just because you signed it, it doesn't suddenly change the law.
You can disclaim implied warranties. Virtually every EULA and website TOS document does so (OT: it bugs me a bit that you're "fairly certain" about this, while you've undoubtedly agreed to that disclaimer dozens of times a year all your life). The UCC itself sets out the rules for disclaiming the implied warranties. It has to be done in a clear and conspicuous manner to be effective, which is why that's the part that's always in full CAPS in the contract, making it particularly easy to spot.
For example, Google's TOS:
> SOME JURISDICTIONS PROVIDE FOR CERTAIN WARRANTIES, LIKE THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE EXCLUDE ALL WARRANTIES.
> THE TWITTER ENTITIES DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT.
> APPLE, ISSUER, AND THEIR LICENSEES, AFFILIATES, AND LICENSORS MAKE NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO GIFT CERTIFICATES, ITUNES CARDS, CONTENT CODES, ALLOWANCES, OR THE ITUNES STORE, APP STORE, MAC APP STORE, OR IBOOKSTORE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
A company can stick whatever it likes in its EULA (or any contract), but that doesn't make it legally enforceable. Company lawyers are paid lots of money to be extremely defensive. It costs them nothing to disclaim all warranties, the only purpose of which seems to be to dissuade some people from taking them to court because of this.
I am more familiar with UK law, but I am certain that under US law if there is a constradiction between what is stated in an otherwise valid contract and US law, then US law takes precedence and the legal contract is modified to comply with US law. It must be that way otherwise you could sign people into slavery by just saying "look its here in the contract". Or "no I am legally allowed to beat my wife, see she signed this contract saying I could".
I'm quite certain you can't disclaim implied warranties in some states.
And either way there's a good argument to be made that you can't "sign away your rights" in this regard without EA providing some concrete 'consideration' in return, even in states where you can waive right to implied warranty.
You paid $60 for something (i.e. the game), and until you have a working game EA hasn't provided any consideration in return.
I would like to say this means I won't buy an EA game but considering how many good franchises they own that would just be a lie. I was going to pick up Sim City. I remember playing it years ago and I loved it. I thought this would be awesome. Now I am definitely not getting it and I can confidently resolve that I will not be buying any future Sim City title.
It is a similar situation with Diablo 3. I was going to get it but after friends abandoned it after about 10 days I figured it wasn't worth it. It also had the same problems as Starcraft with requiring you to be online to even play 'offline' game modes.
A couple of friends and I decided to have a games night a few weeks ago. We lugged our computers to one person's house like the good old days. Got them all running. Installed a bunch of old games and were disappointed to find the majority of multiplayer servers were shut down. Today I read that Sim City stores your saved games online. (I don't know how true this is.) What happens in 5 years time when EA cut back or disconnect their servers? Won't the game be completely unplayable?
Its only in digital good's that you can get screwed like Sim City users are. If I brought Monopoly and found the board was missing I could take it back. Buy a game which doesn't work.. well suck it up fella. Similarly, Amazon can ban your account and you lose access to Kindle books you legitimately paid for...
I might have my facts incorrect here but if an App is removed from the Play / iOS app stores isn't it removed from users devices? What happens to any money you put into those apps?
Pretty much any digital good you buy cannot be resold. Usually reselling your account under which you made such purchases is also not allowed. All in all its a shitty deal for anyone buying digital goods.
Yesterday I read how the EU is getting ready to fine Microsoft presumably for shipping Windows 8 without a browser select screen. I would have thought investigating how consumers are treated by companies offering digital goods should be a far higher priority.
I found Mirror's Edge to be distinctly mediocre but I imagine Battlefield and the fact that they seem to create most of the "official license" sports franchises is what is being referred to.
Yes, on the xbox. The main problem I had with the game was that there was a lot of time spent running around fairly drab indoor environments trying to find the right thing to jump on rather than the fast building scaling action I was expecting.
Its funny that Mirror's Edge has been brought up. I literally completed it yesterday. I am trying to go through my back catalog of unplayed games. Ran through it on the PS3
I think it had the makings of a fantastic game and was let down by pretty much every element. Initially I found the game was pretty exciting, unfortunately getting shot at made it tedious. There was a point where I got ran over by a train and fell off my chair. First game that made that happen. (I looked left, looked right, no train. Stepped out. HONKING TRAIN! Scared the crap out of me. I play games with the TV really loud)
The cityscape was bland, the story was meh, the free running was trial and error, getting shot at constantly was pretty tedious and combat was awkward. That said the idea's in the game were good. I feel it could be rebooted into an excellent game.
Worryingly though EA are getting pretty good at breaking franchises. Age of Empires, Ultima Online and Sim City specifically.. Fifa on the Vita severely damaged that franchises reputation.
If you use iCloud backup and don't ever sync to a local iTunes, then you're out of luck. If you sync with a local iTunes, the app will be in iTunes and will be installed to the device. Unless of course something on the new device prevents the app from running due to technical reasons, but that's the same with old games and new hardware/OSes
I'm not sure this is absolutely true. Years ago I installed an app on my iPhone (Now Playing, a movie times app). That app was removed from the store years ago by the author. Recently I bought an iPad and if I go to "purchased/not on this iPad" in the App Store on the iPad, the app still shows as available for download. You can't search and find it in the store though.
Maybe it still shows because all my devices are iCloud backed up and I never removed it from my iPhone.
I believe the key is that it was removed by the author. Apps that are pulled for violating the App Store rules don't show up in Purchased, to my knowledge. I know I have a couple IPAs floating around just in case I need an emergency tether or something.
After the full iCloud thing launched, I've had apps reappear that were much earlier pulled from the store, gone from my iTunes, and I've changed phones too. So it really does look like the purchase lives in the account forever.
It depends who does the removing. In the past Apple themselves have removed apps from both the App Store and customer devices for malware issues. But if a developer stops selling an app, it remains on your device.
Even if Apple removes it, you get to keep it on your device unless it's something you don't want anyway (i.e. malware). For example, that flashlight app that allowed free tethering a while back got banned from the App Store, but users who bought it got to keep it.
Like the parent said, it depends. A normal App Store pull won't remove installed instances from users' devices, but that mechanism (the "kill switch") /does/ exist for Apple to use in extreme cases (or, really, whenever they want to, since they're the ones who are really in control).
The comment I was replying to said it depends on whether it's Apple or the developer who pulls it from the store. What you are reiterating here is what I said — that being pulled by Apple does not normally result in the app being deleted from devices, but Apple does have the power to do it.
SimCity 4 is still available (~$20 on Steam & Origin), and it's quite good, without any of the online nonsense that infects the current iteration.
Haemimont's Tropico games are also very good (Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/tropico-4) city-builders, with a smaller scale than traditional SimCity titles but more flavor and atmosphere. Steam has a bundle with the latest version, Tropico 4, plus all its expansions for $40 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/19282/).
Towns is a stripped-out Dwarf Fortress done shittily with somehow even worse UI. For that sort of game you're better off playing either Dwarf Fortress or Gnomoria, which is also simplified compared to DF but has a much better UI.
Zeus: Master of Olympus is my favorite city building game.
It just has a crazy charm to it, and it also has really nifty features, like how it shows the whole (albeit simplified) production line for food (fisherman catch fish, take them to a fishery, etc.).
It isn't that hard to factor the downsides into the price you are willing to pay.
The internet whinging machine should focus on clear statements of what the product does and consumer education. EA should only get in trouble if they fail to make it clear that the game requires a network connection or if they fail to provide servers for the advertised period.
Selling a game with online features should not have to be a commitment to provide those features forever, so finding decent middle ground is the only solution.
> It isn't that hard to factor the downsides into the price you are willing to pay.
This. I've bought a number of $10 games on Steam because I figure I'll get that much value out of a game even if Steam disappears next month. But I won't go much higher for anything encumbered by online DRM or other means of remote shutdown.
I can afford more, but the reasoning is psychological. I'll care and get agitated if a $60 investment disappears, but I can write off $10.
I have a small number of games in my library, maybe 12, and I only have 3 of them installed on this computer. If they went out of business, it would be physically impossible for them to send me the files.
Yes, I know they could have some sort of "graceful shutdown period", but what if I don't hear about it?
Yes, they have said that, and with the best intentions. But one can never predict what will actually happen with a company in the throes of shutting down. The lawyers could kick out the programmers before they can throw the killswitch, or even obtain an injunction against doing so. Picture a hypothetical event where Valve enters bankruptcy and shuts down service, but an acquirer intends to resume it, but the case gets stuck in the courts for years. (IANAL and I'm exaggerating to make the point, but you get the idea.)
We're dependent on Valve's good will and intentions for Steam. There is no technical solution that the community can implement without Valve's blessing.
All of the above should be factored into the grandparent post about factoring DRM into discounting the price you're willing to pay. Valve's reassurance reduces but does not eliminate my personal DRM discount. By contrast but also comparison with Valve/Steam, the attitude of EA and many other publishers and platforms instantly pegs my personal DRM discount at 100%.
Valve have always treated their customers pretty well. They're not viewed like EA or Activision for a good reason, they've garnered a great deal of good will by behaving in an exemplary way. You're envisioning a hypothetical of the all the worst possible outcomes. At the moment we have no reason to imagine anything other than them keeping their word. I do agree that it's not ideal having no solution we can implement ourselves.
My criteria for price is actually mainly dependent on how many hours of enjoyment I get out of something. I'm not willing to spend the cost of a triple A game for 10-12 hours gameplay. If it's got something upwards of 40+ hours then I'm quite happy to spend money on it.
One thing that could be a big factor in their favor that such a claim could be credible, is that Valve is privately owned. While that doesn't necessarily mean that greed won't rule the day, but it does mean that if the company leadership prioritizes something besides fiscal performance as it goes through its death throes, it won't be considered criminal negligence.
Aside from the other issues listed here by others, would they even legally be allowed to do that for the majority of the games they sell? Most of those games are not their games, but rather the games of other companies that publish with Steam.
Stating it a little bit differently, if it is ok to put "Some features require an internet connection and are only promised to be supported until Jan, 2015" on a box, then I think it is ok to put "Game requires an internet connection and will be supported until at least Jan, 2015".
A requirement for accurate labeling is reasonably simple, especially in comparison to hairsplitting over whether it is appropriate or allowable to depend on the internet for a particular feature.
It doesn't say anywhere that you must have an internet connection to play at all. Amazon add this text. "Some customers have reported issues when trying to connect to the SimCity servers." Again this gives little indication it will leave you with a broken game.
The labeling you suggest wouldn't get past advertising watch dogs as it would be confusing. Both are too similar.
"Some features require an internet connection and are only promised to be supported until Jan, 2015"
"Game requires an internet connection and will be supported until at least Jan, 2015"
I didn't know Diablo 3, Sim City or Starcraft 2 required an Internet connection to play single player until people were complaining about it.
Also, after the collapse of THQ how valid would such promises be? If EA failed next month and no one purchased the Sim City franchise the game wouldn't work..
Digital or not you assume that in purchasing a game the game will work for the foreseeable future. It isn't like an MMO where you pay for a month's access. You are paying for a license to play the game. You accept that multiplayer servers will eventually be turned off. Generally you don't expect largely single player experiences to stop working.
A lot of PC gamers specifically expect games to always work. Starcraft:Brood War is like 15 years old and I have installed and working on my Windows 7 PC. I gave Grim Fandango a spin a little while ago. Remember that game? Fantastic.
My point is that 'works forever' isn't a battle you are going to win, so aim low and succeed.
My wording doesn't have to be what ends up on boxes. The point is that it should be possible to clearly communicate connection requirements to the purchaser. Do that and they have all the information they need to make (or not make!) the purchase. I'm not terribly sympathetic to the 'the consumer is a moron so you can't try to inform him' line of reasoning.
The fact that companies go out of business isn't that big a deal, if you are concerned EA is going bankrupt, don't believe their promise to provide servers for 18 months and spend your dollars elsewhere.
> Selling a game with online features should not have to be a commitment to provide those features forever, so finding decent middle ground is the only solution.
I bought the damned thing. I didn't buy it "for X years".
The only "middle ground" that works is that if you take down the servers, you must provide the ability for end users to run their own. But that'll never happen, because then they can't sell you New SimCity as easily.
> I bought the damned thing. I didn't buy it "for X years".
Misunderstanding what you bought doesn't actually entitle you to anything more than what you bought. No one promised you that your game would last forever. It was clearly advertised as reliant on an online connection to their servers, and the overwhelming majority of plaintiffs here demonstrate an understanding that such a connection connotes an eventual cessation of service.
If you want to have full ownership over the capability of running the game, get it in writing before you pay.
And your rationale is why we have consumer protection laws: because that behavior is bullshit and cannot be accepted by a reasonable society. It cannot be acceptable to sell one game for $60 that works in perpetuity and one for $60 that gets the plug pulled after two or three years.
Shame that those consumer protection laws are toothless.
Except they're not even selling bananas. They're selling you maybe-bananas. You don't know what you're buying, you don't know the term of the product's lifetime, and they won't tell you.
Markets don't work without fair access to information. If a company commits, with a posted bond, to support the game through date X--sure, you're right. But they're not. They are selling the proverbial cat in a bag. That is anti-consumer, and consumers--people--are more important than the companies that exist to serve them.
I wasn't sure whether to respond to this comment or the ones further up the tree...
Long story short, I agree. maxerickson's idea of labeling is a good one, since the point isn't really the mechanism so much as the principle of stipulating the contents of the contract in detail. If the game industry decided to standardize on only promising a year of service, I suspect that would be fine: it's explicit, it's well-known, and the game-maker will almost certainly run longer than that if their product is remotely successful.
I might have my facts incorrect here but if an App is removed from the Play / iOS app stores isn't it removed from users devices? What happens to any money you put into those apps?
Technically speaking, Google does have this capability to remotely wipe apps from devices [1], but they only do it when the app constitutes a security threat (i.e. malware) to users who were tricked into installing it. As far as I know, they've only done it twice ever [2].
iOS also has this capability [3], and similarly has not done it often (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm only an occasional iOS user).
Your techcrunch link is wrong. It's linking to another source, which spouts what turns out to be incorrect conjecture from a random developer. It's referring to a CoreLocation blacklist, which I believe isn't even consulted on more recent versions of the OS.
"Pretty much any digital good you buy cannot be resold. Usually reselling your account under which you made such purchases is also not allowed. All in all its a shitty deal for anyone buying digital goods."
You aren't buying digital goods, you are either renting or buying a lease on those digital goods. The terms and conditions of those purchases of leases or by paying rent do not provide you with the same rights and obligations as a hard copy or un-DRM version would normally provide (either through terms and conditions or various national legislation & regulations). That is part of the agreement you make when you pay for digital goods.
It is for these reasons why I have stopped spending on large priced digital items and only buy a lease when the items are on significant discount, such as costing less than $10, or rent when substantially discounted. There are few things, including hot new games which I'd normally want to buy, that I'm willing to pay for a virtual copy. I have close to zero trust these services will be around in a few years, or that their servers are sufficient to not lose my purchase record in the coming year or two. While I'm sure I would get my $20-80 worth of use out of the game or book, the concept of the inevitable loss of the item is more important as an influence to me, than the utility & pleasure of the use of the item now.
So... what about GOG.com? And Kickstarter games? There are plenty of "digital goods" out there that don't have shitty DRM or require company servers to be online to access the content you paid for. Let's not talk about DRM like it's the only option.
What about them? Maybe I'm dense today, but I don't see how what you said relates to what he said.
His mentioning DRM was ancillary to the main point, that you don't buy digital goods in the classical sense, but instead lease the right to use/play them. This applies to every form of software that has paid-for licensing, even those that don't have DRM attached to try and protect it.
Games from GoG are provided as unencumbered, fully offline installers with no DRM whatsoever. So long as you have the installer you can install the game on any compatible system. There are no mechanisms for GoG to clawback the installer or to prevent the game from running.
You are still buying a "lease" to use the software from GoG. I'm not completely familiar with their license agreement, but I suspect it allows you to install the software on all computers you use/own. If you were to give it to a friend, that would be violating the terms of the agreement (even though GoG could not stop you).
The agreement may allow you to resell your license, provided you stop using your existing copies. (Again, GoG would have no way of knowing.)
>While I'm sure I would get my $20-80 worth of use out of the game or book, the concept of the inevitable loss of the item is more important as an influence to me, than the utility & pleasure of the use of the item now.
I don't get it. If you believe the experience of playing the game is worth than the cost of the game, why do you care you may lose access to it later on? It's like not going to cinema because you won't have the movie recorded afterwards.
As a person interested in developing games, I'd like to ask what's the aggravating factor here - the fact that many EA games require to be always online or the fact that EA's servers can't handle the load? I'm guessing the latter is the real problem, while the former is probably more a matter of principles (which for a majority of players don't matter) that a real annoyance.
Both, I suspect, though not handling the load is as bad as shipping a game that simply doesn't work. But since they have to be online, you can't fire up a game on an airplane, for instance (unless you feel like buying the wifi). Nor in the car. Nor on the train. It also means it's simply a ticking time bomb - when they decide to end support, you lose your game, completely. I've out-lived a lot of products - why would <application X> be any different?
The former is a real problem too. If your game is likely to just stop working sometime in the not-too-distant future, that drastically decreases its value to me. A game that I would have paid $60 for suddenly becomes at questionable deal at that price point, because you're essentially renting it to me. I would never pay the full price of a game for a rental. A lot of the people I know like to enjoy games for a long time, so if you take that guarantee away, suddenly I'm getting a lot less out of my purchase.
TL;DR: If you're willing to charge in the single-digits for your game, sure, make it as limited as you want. If you want to charge like a real game, don't try to shortchange me with brittle DRM.
I'm the odd one out I know.
EA refunded my money for BF3 after I complained about silly requirement for a browser plugin to play single player.
Steam/Valve on the other hand actually did the opposite.
They did not refund my money for games that had invasive DRM and were not marked but pointed me to their EULA that said they would disable my whole account if I made a charge back.
What's really terrifying about Diablo 3 is that it's the most in-piratable solo game yet. I think that most of the logic is server-side. So if Blizzard decides to pull the plug, you have no choice but to reimplement the whole server-side. Fortunately, Blizzard seems much more serious about the follow-up of their games than EA ever was (consider that Warcraft 3 patches are still being put out).
Still, even Blizzard could not avoid server problems at launch.
This is ridiculous. The OP said he was going to dispute the charge with his credit card company at which point the customer service rep said if he does that they will ban his account. This is so people don't buy the game, dispute the charge and keep playing that game for free.
There are people that are good at customer support and those that aren't. I would think this individual falls into the latter category. Does that mean EA is plotting to scam everybody? Hell no. It means that this CSA didn't do a good job explaining WHY they won't issue a refund. This "article" is just fanning the flames of hatred towards EA and not adding anything. If the OP is truly that unhappy, talk to the credit card company to get the money back and then re-buy when the game is stable. But don't expect money back AND the ability to play the game.
By "account" he was referring to the Origin account, which contains more games than just SimCity. Threatening to remove SimCity from his account would be perfectly fine. But blocking access to ALL other games as well is simply criminal.
Ahhh well that makes more sense on the severity of the issue. However, I highly doubt that EA would want their CSAs to threaten to ban anybody based on asking for a refund or threatening to do a charge back and it is just the work of a terrible CSA
It's actually par for the course for these places to ban your entire account if you ever do a chargeback. Steam does it routinely, and I'm sure EA does it too. Just another way that this Brave New Digital World is disenfranchising consumers.
When I buy SimCity, how long will I be able to play the game for? 30 days? 100 years?
Does EA make any promises about how long they will keep their servers running? If not, what would be the minimum time they would need to keep their servers running to avoid a 'false advertising' prosecution?
I'm not sure if user ignorance is a valid legal claim. diablo 3 is in the same boat. You can play single player but need to authenticate with the blizzard servers. It those go away its game over.
> I'm not sure if user ignorance is a valid legal claim.
IANAL, but there is a case that can be made for reasonable expectation [1]. On the other hand, most people who complain about this actively demonstrate foreknowledge, which AFAICT immediately invalidates their legal standing for reasonable expectation.
I think a talented lawyer may be able to figure out how to draw together law into a strong case where there is some obligation to make sure your game can run mostly-featured without an internet connection... but in order to set precedent, you're probably going to have to sue an indie company to have a fighting chance in terms of money (which would also probably kill said indie) or put together a large enough legal fund to go after a worthwhile target like Ubisoft or EA... and I don't rate your chances high, there.
I wouldn't worry about game design--if you've looked at an AAA game recently you can probably whiteboard out something more interesting and refine it with iteration once it's playable.
What I would worry about is labor costs. People got-ta get paid. An AAA-quality game isn't something you're going to do nights-and-weekends for free when you could be leveraging those skills to get paid. You might get the help of wannabes who don't have the skills to get paid, but do you want to rely on that to push a game that by your own definition is going to require some fairly serious chops to ship?
Sure, open source blah blah blah--but most open source projects that get significant, large-scale contributions have knock-on effects like being able to be easily hired for consulting gigs, that sort of thing. Game development, not so much. And artist types are not inculcated into the open-source world to nearly the extent of programmers, so I find it unlikely that you'll be able to really source all the media you need.
There's usually a ton of overly naive hand-flapping about how you have Wesnoth and Nexuiz and the rest, but if you look at the games, they're not what a reasonable person would call an AAA title on the level of a Starcraft 2 or a Halo (and Nexuiz in particular is based on a closed-source game engine opened up years after its licensing viability was over).
I'm sure you can make good, fun games in an open-source way (because it has been done) but I strongly doubt you'll make anything that's competitive in the AAA market space without accepting that you're lighting a few million dollars on fire (because let's get real, effectively nobody's going to pay you a dime for it).
.
(This is also why I laughed at the guy upthread who said "oh, the market should solve this, someone should start a Kickstarter for a city sim game!". That's not how Kickstarter works and it's not how somebody who can do math approaches a game. To get attention for a high-ask Kickstarter you need a decent chunk of work already done, and by the time you get there the shitbomb of SimCity will probably have departed and taken its stink elsewhere. To build a game on the scale of SimCity in a length of time that won't have your backers screaming for your head, you're going to need a couple million dollars. With extremely rare, you're-not-it exceptions, Kickstarter backers laugh at such requests. It's the "zeitgeist projects" that manage to hit their targets and then a high multiple thereof--and the worst thing that can happen to you if you're hoping to be one of those projects is that you make your goal and no more.
Economies of scale suck for the ambitious, because no matter how cool your idea, people gotta get paid.)
Suspiciously, the chat log doesn't include the agents greeting, and seems to pick up mid-convo. Why would someone include part of a transcript and not the entire thing? Makes me think there's something embarrassing to the OP that was omitted.
Either way, this is like seeing a fight but not seeing who threw the first punch: the OP could've been a massive d-bag in the beginning of the convo. If so, I'd completely understand (as a former tech support agent) why the customer may have been denied remedy.
If OP felt ripped of to the tune of $60, I think it is quite understandable if he was a bit of a douchebag. I can hardly see that as a reasonable justification for denying a refund.
I think the big problem here is that EA enjoys a near monopoly in some sense (say for PC games, certain genres). Most of their PC games in the past few years have been a giant shit show of bugs and server failures, but no one else in the industry has the money to be able to compete with them. Result: The monopoly exploits its customers, and the customers come back anyways, because there is no choice.
I wasn't aware the game didn't release for Mac until later this Spring. I bought it, tried to install it and contacted EA after realizing my mistake. After waiting for 45 minutes for a person to answer the LiveChat, then 5 minutes after that, and I had my refund. I've rethought my purchase and probably won't buy it when it comes out for Mac. (Unless they make major changes to the Mac version because of the backlash. nudge nudge EA)
I'm the odd one out I know.
EA refunded my money for BF3 after I complained about silly requirement for a browser plugin to play single player.
Steam/Valve on the other hand actually did the opposite.
They did not refund my money for games that had invasive DRM and were not marked but pointed me to their EULA that said they would disable my whole account if I made a charge back.
I remember when I was playing these games you could just buy it, run it and enjoy. Now you have DRM, overloaded servers, all kinds of trouble - I actually feel good I'm not that interested in this anymore, and if I want to play for old times' sake I'd just fish out old copy of Starcraft, C&C or Civilization and play it as much as I want without having to rely on anybody for permission. What happened to that?
OTOH, there are normal publishers, like Steam, from which I bought a couple of games and never had any trouble. So it's possible to do it right. EA just doesn't want to do it.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadI hate to be the one to say this, but I really can't see this issue being resolved without regulation.
I know that it may be unlikely, but I do hope that this affects their bottom line. EA is a toxic company inside and out.
1993 EA has nothing to do with EA from 1996 onwards...
EA screwed Origin (that then they already owned, just read stuff about development of Ultima 8 and 9... there are lots of documents about how executive meddling made U8 a meh game, and U9 a totally ruined game), then bought and ruined Westwood, and so on.
Also as the time passed they got more and more problems with employees. Then we had crazy shit, like when EA closed a studio in LA, and people found out that the studio had more middle managers than grunts, and this is why the studio could not decide what to do, it simply had so much people giving orders and so few people doing, that doing stuff was impossible.
The EA that wrote this: http://chrishecker.com/Can_a_Computer_Make_You_Cry%3F doesn't exist anymore.
But their games back then start to suffer from lots of executive meddling, with EA interfering more and more on the artistry of their game authors.
My best guess it is related to the launch of Playstation in late 1995, spurring a race for 3D games and FMV games, requiring much more money than before, and thus requiring more "risk management."
There's your problem. At some point EA started buying up studios to take the IP and fire the employees. Then they went on a micro purchase bender and got rid of any idea of respecting the customer.
That will effectively make business impossible for them if even 0.1% of buyers do this, and it doesn't cost any customer anything.
Plus the banks have incentive to side with the customer, not EA. EA absolutely needs them, but customers can easily run to a different bank.
If you try this with Steam, they flag you for fraud and shut down your without recourse. All previously bought games are lost.
If you try this with Amazon, they flag you for fraud and shut down your account without recourse. Your previously bought e-books are automatically deleted from all your devices.
I certainly don't like EA's DRM practices and some of their other practices, but now that I'm another day into the future, I could easily see this happening to any company as well-used as them.
Addendum: Startups that claim they don't/wouldn't have these sorts of problems are probably because their load comes slowly, steadily, and these problems are caught early, or refactored out for efficiency, and the developers miss the potentially catastrophic results. When you get hit by a LOAD of traffic all at once, or other similar thing, bad things happen.
See: Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Half Life 2: Deathmatch
The cost of Sim City is literally half an hour of consultancy work. This means the lawsuit would cost me more than I could hope to gain from it, and I would only be doing it to spite the publisher.
If that is my goal, it is a more efficient use of my time to accept the sunken cost, give some negative reviews, and badmouth the publisher.
Think about it.
All regulation would do is cement EA's position as legal or even required.
Note: I'm referring to in the US here, I'm unsure of the legality of doing that in the EU.
MasterCard Chargeback Code 53: Cardholder Dispute Defective/Not as Described
Discover Chareback Code RM: Quality of Goods or Services Dispute
Charging a credit card but providing a defective product is a valid chargeback reason.
You may already have given up the right to a class action in the EA ToS.
Don't know if that'll come to anything.
"if you regrettably feel that we left you down, you can of course request a refund for your order."
As far as I know, they didn't state they would proceed with the request, only that you can "request" a refund. I can ask for the moon, it doesn't mean I'll get it.
I was thinking of buying having seen the early reviews. Now I won't, EVER. I've got plenty of other games to play. I don't need this one.
If you just don't buy it, EA will assume everyone pirated the game and cancel any future SimCity games... then we end up stuck in a DRM-filled loop forever. Requesting a refund is far more productive from a feedback perspective.
Or does EA now hold all the patents on drawing roads and zoning buildings onto an isometric tilemap? :)
I definitely with the strategy you bring forward. Just let the Sim-City franchise (it is only a name at this point, Will Wright and the majority of original Maxis crew are out), any other studio can get a better game with less stupid DRM.
Which is a bit of a shame, since _City Life_ (the predecessor) was an okay game.
Gool Ol' Games offers plenty of classics if you haven't played them. Ceasar 3, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Pharaoh / Cleopatra, Stronghold Crusader... all DRM-free and less than $10 each.
Dwarf Fortress is free as well with an awesome following. If you can get over the ASCII / tileset thing, its a good game.
It would be nice if we didn't have to treat game companies as adversaries like this.
ea are treating their entire target market as adversaries; game companies have been doing that for years.
Remember, don't cross EA, it's only through their glowing generosity that they allow you to use some of the programs on your computer.
You like those programs, right?
My general advice is to ignore all EA games until they either change their ways(lol ya rite) or die.
Also remember that not only do they love to fuck up a launch, but they also love to discontinue games with online components to screw everyone who bought them, and a lot of these games are on current platforms (360) or feature somewhat recent IP (some bf3 item in there). http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0L266ui...
Personally I have refused to use their Origin market place from the start, as I do not support market fragmentation when it comes to electronic delivery service on a single plateform (Windows PC in this case). This and the really poor customer experience I have had with them in the last 10 years.
In the technology sector, the greatest success stories have emerged not when one company executes flawlessly, but when one company executes competently in an environment where all of the other competitors act like barking idiots. You can't even count the number of times this has happened, but citing Microsoft, Google, and Apple should be enough to get the point across.
That's what's happening with Valve, IMHO. It's not that they are perfect... but when your competition is Electronic Arts, it's hard not to look good.
Imaging that, going to your local super market (ASDA for an example) you could not find a major brand of cereals (Kellogs for the sake of argumentation). And that you would have to go to a direct competitor to find it (Tesco in this case). This is a fairly strait forward hurdle against a free market.
I don't think it's necessarily bad to have a few different distributors, after all it was not so long ago that people would get their meat and vegtables from different shops for example.
People that spend $20 or $40 to go to a movie for 2 hours can't be that worried about maximizing the value they extract from a $60 game. I do look at it from the standpoint of not wanting games to work like this, but I can see how someone might not care much, especially if things smooth out soon.
Maybe it's just the fact that I'm getting older, but I will happily choose spite over entertainment. I disagree with the companies practices, than that is that. No sale. This goes for all things.
Honestly, I'm even getting a little wary of Steam. They too share EAs account banning or a chargeback. Where else do we allow a company to destroy our goods by exercising our rights as consumers? It's maddness! Some people's steam libraries are easily worth a $1k or more. What gives them the right to take away what we've paid for?
I just don't know if it's worth supporting this kind of business model anymore. Even if that means I just don't get to play the games I want to anymore. Following the steam example, Gabe is getting up there in years. He's not going around forever. When the new CEO comes in, are they going to stay a private enterprise, will they still "focus on the customer first?" If any of that changes, you suddenly have a massive investment teetering on the goodwill of a company.
Why almost? EA as publisher is a big warning sign and in combination with the DRM what's happening now is exactly the expected outcome.
That said, chargebacks aren't a blanket get out of jail free card. Some CC plans offer consumer protection insurance, which goes above and beyond simple chargebacks.
If you've got a dozen other games, that'd be a big hit.
Death by a thousand cuts, indeed.
no-show -> default judgement -> refund, worst case.
For example, Google's TOS:
> SOME JURISDICTIONS PROVIDE FOR CERTAIN WARRANTIES, LIKE THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE EXCLUDE ALL WARRANTIES.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/
Or Twitter's:
> THE TWITTER ENTITIES DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT.
https://twitter.com/tos
Or the iTunes store:
> APPLE, ISSUER, AND THEIR LICENSEES, AFFILIATES, AND LICENSORS MAKE NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO GIFT CERTIFICATES, ITUNES CARDS, CONTENT CODES, ALLOWANCES, OR THE ITUNES STORE, APP STORE, MAC APP STORE, OR IBOOKSTORE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html#SALE
I am more familiar with UK law, but I am certain that under US law if there is a constradiction between what is stated in an otherwise valid contract and US law, then US law takes precedence and the legal contract is modified to comply with US law. It must be that way otherwise you could sign people into slavery by just saying "look its here in the contract". Or "no I am legally allowed to beat my wife, see she signed this contract saying I could".
2. Everything you listed there is a FREE as in beer product. Note that "iOS" is not on the list of non-warranted products.
And either way there's a good argument to be made that you can't "sign away your rights" in this regard without EA providing some concrete 'consideration' in return, even in states where you can waive right to implied warranty.
You paid $60 for something (i.e. the game), and until you have a working game EA hasn't provided any consideration in return.
It is a similar situation with Diablo 3. I was going to get it but after friends abandoned it after about 10 days I figured it wasn't worth it. It also had the same problems as Starcraft with requiring you to be online to even play 'offline' game modes.
A couple of friends and I decided to have a games night a few weeks ago. We lugged our computers to one person's house like the good old days. Got them all running. Installed a bunch of old games and were disappointed to find the majority of multiplayer servers were shut down. Today I read that Sim City stores your saved games online. (I don't know how true this is.) What happens in 5 years time when EA cut back or disconnect their servers? Won't the game be completely unplayable?
Its only in digital good's that you can get screwed like Sim City users are. If I brought Monopoly and found the board was missing I could take it back. Buy a game which doesn't work.. well suck it up fella. Similarly, Amazon can ban your account and you lose access to Kindle books you legitimately paid for...
I might have my facts incorrect here but if an App is removed from the Play / iOS app stores isn't it removed from users devices? What happens to any money you put into those apps?
Pretty much any digital good you buy cannot be resold. Usually reselling your account under which you made such purchases is also not allowed. All in all its a shitty deal for anyone buying digital goods.
Yesterday I read how the EU is getting ready to fine Microsoft presumably for shipping Windows 8 without a browser select screen. I would have thought investigating how consumers are treated by companies offering digital goods should be a far higher priority.
Which? The last game they made that can be described as "more than mediocre" was Mirror's Edge.
I think it had the makings of a fantastic game and was let down by pretty much every element. Initially I found the game was pretty exciting, unfortunately getting shot at made it tedious. There was a point where I got ran over by a train and fell off my chair. First game that made that happen. (I looked left, looked right, no train. Stepped out. HONKING TRAIN! Scared the crap out of me. I play games with the TV really loud)
The cityscape was bland, the story was meh, the free running was trial and error, getting shot at constantly was pretty tedious and combat was awkward. That said the idea's in the game were good. I feel it could be rebooted into an excellent game.
I enjoy Fifa and Battlefield. I am sure there are many more in the list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games
Worryingly though EA are getting pretty good at breaking franchises. Age of Empires, Ultima Online and Sim City specifically.. Fifa on the Vita severely damaged that franchises reputation.
No, it's not (at least on iOS)
Source: I've bought a Navigation-App which since seems to be discontinued (N-Drive or something like that).
Maybe it still shows because all my devices are iCloud backed up and I never removed it from my iPhone.
And even if they do that, you still have the apk on your harddrive, you can back it up.
To the best of my knowledge, Apple has never removed any app directly from the user's devices.
For example, if one wanted to create a DRM free version of Sim City now would be an excellent time to start a kickstarter.
Or you could just go get Cities XL
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/cities-xl they pissed everyone else off at launch, too
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/cities-xl-2012 not much better
Haemimont's Tropico games are also very good (Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/tropico-4) city-builders, with a smaller scale than traditional SimCity titles but more flavor and atmosphere. Steam has a bundle with the latest version, Tropico 4, plus all its expansions for $40 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/19282/).
It just has a crazy charm to it, and it also has really nifty features, like how it shows the whole (albeit simplified) production line for food (fisherman catch fish, take them to a fishery, etc.).
Can't comment on the credibility though, nothing solid has been shown yet.
The internet whinging machine should focus on clear statements of what the product does and consumer education. EA should only get in trouble if they fail to make it clear that the game requires a network connection or if they fail to provide servers for the advertised period.
Selling a game with online features should not have to be a commitment to provide those features forever, so finding decent middle ground is the only solution.
This. I've bought a number of $10 games on Steam because I figure I'll get that much value out of a game even if Steam disappears next month. But I won't go much higher for anything encumbered by online DRM or other means of remote shutdown.
I can afford more, but the reasoning is psychological. I'll care and get agitated if a $60 investment disappears, but I can write off $10.
I have a small number of games in my library, maybe 12, and I only have 3 of them installed on this computer. If they went out of business, it would be physically impossible for them to send me the files.
Yes, I know they could have some sort of "graceful shutdown period", but what if I don't hear about it?
We're dependent on Valve's good will and intentions for Steam. There is no technical solution that the community can implement without Valve's blessing.
All of the above should be factored into the grandparent post about factoring DRM into discounting the price you're willing to pay. Valve's reassurance reduces but does not eliminate my personal DRM discount. By contrast but also comparison with Valve/Steam, the attitude of EA and many other publishers and platforms instantly pegs my personal DRM discount at 100%.
Valve have always treated their customers pretty well. They're not viewed like EA or Activision for a good reason, they've garnered a great deal of good will by behaving in an exemplary way. You're envisioning a hypothetical of the all the worst possible outcomes. At the moment we have no reason to imagine anything other than them keeping their word. I do agree that it's not ideal having no solution we can implement ourselves.
My criteria for price is actually mainly dependent on how many hours of enjoyment I get out of something. I'm not willing to spend the cost of a triple A game for 10-12 hours gameplay. If it's got something upwards of 40+ hours then I'm quite happy to spend money on it.
Selling a game that requires online features to work is very different to eventually shutting off the servers of a game that has some online features.
Stating it a little bit differently, if it is ok to put "Some features require an internet connection and are only promised to be supported until Jan, 2015" on a box, then I think it is ok to put "Game requires an internet connection and will be supported until at least Jan, 2015".
A requirement for accurate labeling is reasonably simple, especially in comparison to hairsplitting over whether it is appropriate or allowable to depend on the internet for a particular feature.
Look at Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Arts-Simcity-PC-DVD/dp/B0...
It doesn't say anywhere that you must have an internet connection to play at all. Amazon add this text. "Some customers have reported issues when trying to connect to the SimCity servers." Again this gives little indication it will leave you with a broken game.
The labeling you suggest wouldn't get past advertising watch dogs as it would be confusing. Both are too similar.
"Some features require an internet connection and are only promised to be supported until Jan, 2015"
"Game requires an internet connection and will be supported until at least Jan, 2015"
I didn't know Diablo 3, Sim City or Starcraft 2 required an Internet connection to play single player until people were complaining about it.
Also, after the collapse of THQ how valid would such promises be? If EA failed next month and no one purchased the Sim City franchise the game wouldn't work..
Digital or not you assume that in purchasing a game the game will work for the foreseeable future. It isn't like an MMO where you pay for a month's access. You are paying for a license to play the game. You accept that multiplayer servers will eventually be turned off. Generally you don't expect largely single player experiences to stop working.
A lot of PC gamers specifically expect games to always work. Starcraft:Brood War is like 15 years old and I have installed and working on my Windows 7 PC. I gave Grim Fandango a spin a little while ago. Remember that game? Fantastic.
My point is that 'works forever' isn't a battle you are going to win, so aim low and succeed.
My wording doesn't have to be what ends up on boxes. The point is that it should be possible to clearly communicate connection requirements to the purchaser. Do that and they have all the information they need to make (or not make!) the purchase. I'm not terribly sympathetic to the 'the consumer is a moron so you can't try to inform him' line of reasoning.
The fact that companies go out of business isn't that big a deal, if you are concerned EA is going bankrupt, don't believe their promise to provide servers for 18 months and spend your dollars elsewhere.
I bought the damned thing. I didn't buy it "for X years".
The only "middle ground" that works is that if you take down the servers, you must provide the ability for end users to run their own. But that'll never happen, because then they can't sell you New SimCity as easily.
Misunderstanding what you bought doesn't actually entitle you to anything more than what you bought. No one promised you that your game would last forever. It was clearly advertised as reliant on an online connection to their servers, and the overwhelming majority of plaintiffs here demonstrate an understanding that such a connection connotes an eventual cessation of service.
If you want to have full ownership over the capability of running the game, get it in writing before you pay.
Shame that those consumer protection laws are toothless.
That is, if a company wants to sell bananas, they shouldn't have to meet your expectations surrounding apples.
Markets don't work without fair access to information. If a company commits, with a posted bond, to support the game through date X--sure, you're right. But they're not. They are selling the proverbial cat in a bag. That is anti-consumer, and consumers--people--are more important than the companies that exist to serve them.
The company longevity thing is problematic, but I have trouble getting worked up about it for $50 luxury purchases.
Long story short, I agree. maxerickson's idea of labeling is a good one, since the point isn't really the mechanism so much as the principle of stipulating the contents of the contract in detail. If the game industry decided to standardize on only promising a year of service, I suspect that would be fine: it's explicit, it's well-known, and the game-maker will almost certainly run longer than that if their product is remotely successful.
Which is the point of accurate labeling, it creates fewer restrictions for everybody.
(I do think fit for purpose is a good test, but it can't just apply to any imagined purpose that any person can come up with)
Technically speaking, Google does have this capability to remotely wipe apps from devices [1], but they only do it when the app constitutes a security threat (i.e. malware) to users who were tricked into installing it. As far as I know, they've only done it twice ever [2].
iOS also has this capability [3], and similarly has not done it often (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm only an occasional iOS user).
[1] http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/06/exercising-ou...
[2] Both times were to proof-of-concept apps. http://jon.oberheide.org/blog/2010/06/25/remote-kill-and-ins...
[3] http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/07/apple-can-remotely-remove-a...
You aren't buying digital goods, you are either renting or buying a lease on those digital goods. The terms and conditions of those purchases of leases or by paying rent do not provide you with the same rights and obligations as a hard copy or un-DRM version would normally provide (either through terms and conditions or various national legislation & regulations). That is part of the agreement you make when you pay for digital goods.
It is for these reasons why I have stopped spending on large priced digital items and only buy a lease when the items are on significant discount, such as costing less than $10, or rent when substantially discounted. There are few things, including hot new games which I'd normally want to buy, that I'm willing to pay for a virtual copy. I have close to zero trust these services will be around in a few years, or that their servers are sufficient to not lose my purchase record in the coming year or two. While I'm sure I would get my $20-80 worth of use out of the game or book, the concept of the inevitable loss of the item is more important as an influence to me, than the utility & pleasure of the use of the item now.
His mentioning DRM was ancillary to the main point, that you don't buy digital goods in the classical sense, but instead lease the right to use/play them. This applies to every form of software that has paid-for licensing, even those that don't have DRM attached to try and protect it.
You are still buying a "lease" to use the software from GoG. I'm not completely familiar with their license agreement, but I suspect it allows you to install the software on all computers you use/own. If you were to give it to a friend, that would be violating the terms of the agreement (even though GoG could not stop you).
The agreement may allow you to resell your license, provided you stop using your existing copies. (Again, GoG would have no way of knowing.)
So don't pretend that only games have this issue.
It's not even an issue to me. I'm not sure what your point is.
I was just trying to clarify that game purchases are still essentially software licenses, even from the least restrictive providers (GoG).
I don't get it. If you believe the experience of playing the game is worth than the cost of the game, why do you care you may lose access to it later on? It's like not going to cinema because you won't have the movie recorded afterwards.
TL;DR: If you're willing to charge in the single-digits for your game, sure, make it as limited as you want. If you want to charge like a real game, don't try to shortchange me with brittle DRM.
Steam/Valve on the other hand actually did the opposite. They did not refund my money for games that had invasive DRM and were not marked but pointed me to their EULA that said they would disable my whole account if I made a charge back.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5406-WFZ...
I despise online only DRM, but please lets not only bash EA here. Valve is just as bad.
Still, even Blizzard could not avoid server problems at launch.
There are people that are good at customer support and those that aren't. I would think this individual falls into the latter category. Does that mean EA is plotting to scam everybody? Hell no. It means that this CSA didn't do a good job explaining WHY they won't issue a refund. This "article" is just fanning the flames of hatred towards EA and not adding anything. If the OP is truly that unhappy, talk to the credit card company to get the money back and then re-buy when the game is stable. But don't expect money back AND the ability to play the game.
Additionally, that does not explain why EA doesn't offer a refund.
The lack of a refund is easily explained by EA's short term greed and having franchises that people really like.
Does EA make any promises about how long they will keep their servers running? If not, what would be the minimum time they would need to keep their servers running to avoid a 'false advertising' prosecution?
IANAL, but there is a case that can be made for reasonable expectation [1]. On the other hand, most people who complain about this actively demonstrate foreknowledge, which AFAICT immediately invalidates their legal standing for reasonable expectation.
I think a talented lawyer may be able to figure out how to draw together law into a strong case where there is some obligation to make sure your game can run mostly-featured without an internet connection... but in order to set precedent, you're probably going to have to sue an indie company to have a fighting chance in terms of money (which would also probably kill said indie) or put together a large enough legal fund to go after a worthwhile target like Ubisoft or EA... and I don't rate your chances high, there.
[1] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/doctrine-of-rea...
What I would worry about is labor costs. People got-ta get paid. An AAA-quality game isn't something you're going to do nights-and-weekends for free when you could be leveraging those skills to get paid. You might get the help of wannabes who don't have the skills to get paid, but do you want to rely on that to push a game that by your own definition is going to require some fairly serious chops to ship?
Sure, open source blah blah blah--but most open source projects that get significant, large-scale contributions have knock-on effects like being able to be easily hired for consulting gigs, that sort of thing. Game development, not so much. And artist types are not inculcated into the open-source world to nearly the extent of programmers, so I find it unlikely that you'll be able to really source all the media you need.
There's usually a ton of overly naive hand-flapping about how you have Wesnoth and Nexuiz and the rest, but if you look at the games, they're not what a reasonable person would call an AAA title on the level of a Starcraft 2 or a Halo (and Nexuiz in particular is based on a closed-source game engine opened up years after its licensing viability was over).
I'm sure you can make good, fun games in an open-source way (because it has been done) but I strongly doubt you'll make anything that's competitive in the AAA market space without accepting that you're lighting a few million dollars on fire (because let's get real, effectively nobody's going to pay you a dime for it).
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(This is also why I laughed at the guy upthread who said "oh, the market should solve this, someone should start a Kickstarter for a city sim game!". That's not how Kickstarter works and it's not how somebody who can do math approaches a game. To get attention for a high-ask Kickstarter you need a decent chunk of work already done, and by the time you get there the shitbomb of SimCity will probably have departed and taken its stink elsewhere. To build a game on the scale of SimCity in a length of time that won't have your backers screaming for your head, you're going to need a couple million dollars. With extremely rare, you're-not-it exceptions, Kickstarter backers laugh at such requests. It's the "zeitgeist projects" that manage to hit their targets and then a high multiple thereof--and the worst thing that can happen to you if you're hoping to be one of those projects is that you make your goal and no more.
Economies of scale suck for the ambitious, because no matter how cool your idea, people gotta get paid.)
There is another hn thread about it : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5343715
Either way, this is like seeing a fight but not seeing who threw the first punch: the OP could've been a massive d-bag in the beginning of the convo. If so, I'd completely understand (as a former tech support agent) why the customer may have been denied remedy.
Steam/Valve on the other hand actually did the opposite. They did not refund my money for games that had invasive DRM and were not marked but pointed me to their EULA that said they would disable my whole account if I made a charge back.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5406-WFZ...
I despise online only DRM, but please lets not only bash EA here. Valve is just as bad.
OTOH, there are normal publishers, like Steam, from which I bought a couple of games and never had any trouble. So it's possible to do it right. EA just doesn't want to do it.