SimCity's Launch Isn't Going So Well

So, Cheetah speed and the simulation rendering is not done on a local machine but on the SimCity servers?! That's just an insane way of handling your back-end!

I love SimCity games, but the way they're handling this, I don't feel sorry for them in the least at all the refunds they're going to need to process.

I'll pick up the Mac version when it's discounted this summer.

@shinboy630 I agree that he was a little abrupt, but come on; the guy sourced his material and the customer service rep was stonewalling him. The least the customer service rep could have done is say "hold on while I check on it" and get a manager or something. I'm sure they're outsourced.

This debacle should have been wholly predictable by Maxis/EA.

The game is designed to not just use but to require cloud-based servers to run, meaning the problem isn't just limited to the all-too-familiar always-on DRM requirements we've come to know and loathe.

From the Maxis SimCity website:

"The GlassBox simulation engine (via the GlassHouse cloud server environment) receives and processes each player’s city every three minutes, tracking all cities and making live updates to every player’s game worldwide."

SimCity Live Service

This is how Maxis intends to get around the potential limitations of individual users' computers, so it should not only have been factored into any calculations made about server requirements prior to launch, it should have been given more weight than virtually any other factor that Maxis/EA was accounting for.

It's as though they're completely clueless about both the requirements of their own game and the capabilities of the computers in their user base.

Man, normally stuff like this happens, and an hour after launch some guy is going "WAH WAH WAH I WANT A REFUND I'M NEVER BUYING AN EA GAME AGAIN." and then a day after launch it's all pretty much okay, and the angry rhetoric dies down.

But this is going so badly for EA, it's almost comical. Every hour this goes on they're generating so much bad will. And for a company like EA, already drowning in bad will, it's hard to see how they ever get past that.

Not that I feel sorry for them or anything, because it is their own damn fault.

Good looking out Amazon.

@dantronlesotho: I'm sorry, but that guy was being a complete dick to that customer service rep. It's not that dude's fault the game isn't up to snuff, and it's not his fault that higher up have iffy (at best) policies when it comes to returns and refunds.

Yes it sucks that he couldn't get a refund for a product that he felt was defective, but being a douche to the service rep doesn't help anyone.

Seriously, what hole were you hiding under?

The GF bought Simcity for me as a present. I was able to play through the tutorial about 6 hours ago, after that it dc'd from the servers and hasn't been able to connect since. Not expecting it to work for at least a week.

I suspected this would happen and decided to wait to purchase the game. The plus side for me is, now I know how bloody tiny the city sizes are and am not interested in the game at all anymore. I admire the finite simulation the game seems to focus on, I'm just more interested in grander scale city/world building.

The worst part is that I REALLY like the game so far and want to keep playing. :(

I bought this game knowing and accepting that there would almost certainly be problems, and I was right. However it's not until they disabled Cheetah speed that I became annoyed. Cities are going to take forever now!

Reposted from origin's forums. Hopefully you can see the image. If not it's here: http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18gs2vgs50fjijpg/original.jpg

When all this began on Tuesday I kind of laughed and thought "What did people expect? Of course shit is fucked!" to myself, smugly. Granted, I'm no fan of always-on DRM and think it's bullshit like everyone else, but knowing EA was using it, I was not surprised this happened.

That said, two days later and they still have this issue? That is really bad. I just can't fathom how whatever extra sales come from making the game "impossible to crack" (realistically it will still be cracked eventually, but let's just assume for the sake of argument it IS impossible) justify financially not only the cost of running all these authentication servers, but the ire of all the people who bought the game legit and are now fuming over how terribly the launch has gone, especially after 2 "public betas". Not to mention, being EA, what happens ~5 years from now when they inevitably take down their SimCity servers? Are people just SOL or do they, at that point, just accept that piracy will happen and remove the authentication requirement themselves?

I feel like we are at a point that we can safely make the assumption that "online only single player game" = "unplayable for 1 week+ after launch".

Set your expectations accordingly, people.

Going to wait to buy till it's settled. Got Starcraft II expansion next week to look forward to!

How long have you owned a computer with an internet connection?

EA respecting their costumers, apparently that is bad for business or something.

DD future, everybody.

either verge or joystiq had a great analogy on this - it's like going to a restaurant, paying for the food and then not actually getting the food that you paid for and being told that they don't know when you will be able to get it and no you can't have your money back.

#crazy

Bought it and feel ripped off.

Now imagine if the cities were bigger. You'd never be able to fix those servers!

Always on DRM isn't doing any of these companies any PR favors. Is it so absolutely unforgivably impossible to have a single player mode in the event this stuff happens?

In order to prevent a couple thousand people from stealing your game, you prevent a couple million from playing it entirely.

I hope EA catches on fire and manages to realize that this stuff isn't helping before they burn away completely.

Always online DRM. Totally worth it.

Okay, whatever, leaderboards are shit anyway, who needs them, does that mean I can play now? *Checks* Nope.

The game is absolutely fantastic from what I played during the beta. I rather enjoy the aspect of multiple cities rather than one larger one. I don't see why a review score has anything to do with online-capabilities. If Polygon wrote up an article saying that the game isn't worth buying until all of these issues are fixed and that the game works to the point where they experienced it (the press beta), then sure. However, 9.5/10 sounds perfectly fine.

I'm really glad I avoided picking this one up on launch day. I really wanted to, but I listened to TotalBiscuit in his "WTF is" episode and knew that it was just going to be another Diablo III episode. However, this looks worse.

I hope this starts to scare developers out of this non-nonsensical DRM. I am in no way, shape, or form saying that only communities are a bad thing, but I am saying that forcing DRM is. Let a player experience the game offline if they choose, but give us a reason to go online. Instead of saying that it's some form of gameplay mechanic, treat it as a challenge to better innovate on the online structure so we want to go online. As far as I'm concerned, this entire ordeal has nothing to do with engaging a player in the online world, but a half-assed anti-piracy attempt and a way to funnel DLC onto the player.

Man, sucks to see this happen. I LOVED the previous Sim City games.

The announcements in the article officially make the SC launch a bigger disaster than Diablo 3. I expected a few bumps in the road to launching a big game. But this is day 3 after release and their solutions is to shut down parts of the game and reduce the game speed?

This is the game that officially soured me on always-on games. I had some bad experiences in the past but this has been a wreck. Each one of the patches and updates they make have made the game more difficult for me to play. My entire region is stuck on the West 2 servers even though EA customer service says I should be able to access on other servers. Their lack of forwardness in owning to the problems gives me little confidence that this is their "highest priority."

Dunno why they're trying to fix the servers, they're just going to turn them off in 4 years.

Here's an idea. Don't buy Sim City. Maybe if EA loses some money, they'll spend a little more time on their launch bullshit.

Serious question: is Polygon going to lower their review score again?

B-b-but muh DRM

I just got done playing for about 4 hours. No real issues. It was fantastic

Ahaha! Please everyone, tell me more about why having to always be connected online isn't a big deal. They've got your money, you think they will fix this quick?

TRUTH!

The game being broken is as bad as it was predictable, but what I think is really terrible about this whole situation is that EA's refusing refunds.

Your game is broken, does not work, give refunds, you assholes.

Good on Amazon by the way.

No offline gaming option... it's the future!

I miss the advisors popping up and telling me things and I also miss ORDINANCES...I think I still have SimCity 3000 Unlimited around here

@likeassur: Diablo III's launch was the mess that taught me to never pick up an always online title at release again. All titles, actually - I'm far less concerned with day one purchases than I was a year ago even. Without it, I might have been wringing my hands with all the other frustrated SimCity owners right now, who will likely take away similar lessons from this situation.

This is why I tend to hold out on this type of game, then again I brought Diablo a couple of weeks after release and they still haven't implemented all the gameplay elements that they promised *shrug

Amazon still hasn't shipped my disc version of the game either, and I ordered it on the 16th of February. Probably gonna try to cancel the order if it's not shipped by this evening.

For those asking about SimCity4, it runs as flawlessly as ever on Win7 once you do a few things like setting custom resolutions and using an app that turns windowed games into borderless fullscreen windows (SimCity 4 won't properly do 32-bit color in real fullscreen on modern GPUs using DirectX hardware rendering) and crank down the shadows setting. Might have to also set the preferred resolution in the WindowedBorderlessGaming program for it to look right.

I'm still holding off playing SimCity4 so I don't get burnt out on the mechanics by the time my copy of SimCity 2013 arrives, if it ever does.

All over the internet?

This game is a pile of hot garbage. I'm a pretty big SimCity fan, and after playing the beta I was a little worried, but enjoyed it enough to preorder the deluxe version, after all, I've been playing SC4 for a solid 10 years and still bust out SC2000 and 3000 from time to time. SimCity is something I can always come back to. This game is so broken on so many levels that I don't even know what to say about it. Even when I can actually play (which so far has only been twice despite many, many attempts), so many things don't work the way that they're supposed to and the game just kind drops you in without much feedback on how some of the mechanics work, you just figure them out when things go wrong. If you don't have people sharing anything near your city in your region that you need, you just run out of things like water and power. Holy shit, what a disappointment.

How wonderful to see, their own DRM as a concrete slab, tied to a noose around their necks. Crushing them, harder... and harder...

Don't be fooled here; any processing they've moved from the game to their servers they've moved primarily for DRM reasons (see also: Ubisoft's always-on-DRM). Think about it, how advanced do you think these similations are? Not very. It's all smoke and mirrors. Let's assume the opposite is true that they are running heavy simulations at their end. This would mean they've moved CPU and bandwidth COST from the client (you) to their own bottom line. Does this sound like something EA would do out of the kindness of their hearts? You think they use the heat from the server halls to warm their snowed in corporate HQ for free?

They have a badly designed game hooked up to an equally poorly designed and apparently underdimensioned backend. They know there will be a peak at release, but they DO NOT WANT TO PAY FOR IT. Instead they just sit back and hope that it won't be "that bad" before the peak flattens out. In this case though, I thinkt the noose tightened a bit harder than they had calculated with. The weight never came off the concrete slab after the first day.

Autoerotic DRMyxiation.

Hope they at least get the satisfaction they were looking for out of it.

These MMOs never have good launches.

Oh wait. . .

Where was this freakout when Diablo III launched?

The small cities turned me off the game, the reason i loved the previous games in the city was managing the cities infrastructure from top to bottom, making the decisions about resources and planning my buildings and land around the needs of the city.

with the regions all sharing the same RCI i worry that the game is much more reactionary to what the other people are doing leaving me less in control of the cities overall structure.

This is the game that made me realize it's time to stop pre-ordering.

I have too much time at work today, but ever since Amazon stopped selling the download version of the game, I've been watching the reviews. It's getting 10 to 15 new 1 star reviews every 10 minutes or so. It's actually pretty remarkable.