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Comment by greggman | Hacker News Reader

It's frustrating to me that people put up with this instead of boycotting the game FOREVER!

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.

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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.

> It's almost a little hard to sympathize with these people that preorder the games.

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.

Not everyone keeps up with the politics of the gaming industry.

I'd think people still read about a game before they buy/preorder it?

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? :)

They can't do that for all their games.

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.

Actually, there are already games similar to Sim-City (we could call them city building simulators) such as http://www2.citiesxl.com/ or http://www.worldoftropico.com/us/index.php

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.

I'm not buying a game to make a point. I'll instead nit buy a game and not fork over my hard earned dough.

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.

if someone is determined to treat you as an adversary, it doesn't really make much sense to behave as though they aren't one.

"Someone" == EA's entire target market? If this is really the logic they are abiding by, perhaps their problems are even worse than we thought.

no, i meant that since the game companies are already treating us as adversaries, the question of us not treating them likewise does not even arise.

ea are treating their entire target market as adversaries; game companies have been doing that for years.

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.

You like those programs, right?

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...

Is Diablo 3 EA game?

No it is not. I was just using their terrible launch as an example of games with terrible launches.

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.

What's more amusing is people keep returning! It's Command & Conquer 4 all over again and I will never forget that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You believe that Valve should have a monopoly on electronically distributing PC games?

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.

Though valve do the same thing with their games..

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.

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