Back on topic, I can't stand a requirement that I be online to play a single-player game. It adds no benefits to me as a player (I don't care about having achievements in an online showcase to show off to others), introduces a lot of potential problems (as have been noted above), and adds ongoing maintenance costs to the game which divert sales revenues away from actual game development.

There's something to be said for a connection requirement for DRM

The problem is that it's not just drm. The game's data and some of the simulation exists primarily in the cloud. If it were just drm they could have turned it off for a couple days to save the bad publicity.

Back on topic, I can't stand a requirement that I be online to play a single-player game. It adds no benefits to me as a player (I don't care about having achievements in an online showcase to show off to others), introduces a lot of potential problems (as have been noted above), and adds ongoing maintenance costs to the game which divert sales revenues away from actual game development.

There's something to be said for a connection requirement for DRM

The problem is that it's not just drm. The game's data and some of the simulation exists primarily in the cloud. If it were just drm they could have turned it off for a couple days to save the bad publicity.

And from a basic design stand point, this was a stupid idea from the get go. I have seen nothing to suggest that the entire simulation could not have easily been handled by my home system. The game uses a reasonably small fraction of my system resources. As it is now the game is almost unplayable to rely on supporting multiple cities in a region, even if they're all your own, as the servers are not allowing things to sync up properly.

More than a decade has passed, technology evolved a bunch and still: Diablo3 was cracked (even before release); Max Payne 3 was cracked; SimCity will be cracked.

If you consider a dumb client without any gameplay as "cracked" then yeah, Diablo 3 was cracked.

I understand DRM is a tricksome beast and that piracy of games is way out of whack - though this situation has been around for as long as I can remember, the only real change being the increased ease of sharing pirated games around the net to the point that it is akin to the commonality of the VCR and it's use to copy films, tv programs in breach of copyright etc. The irony of a recent game on Steam being greenlit after using Pirate Bay also comes to mind.

I also understand that come the launch day of any major title there is going to be glut of people trying to play and that this glut will most likely hang around for a few days.

I know that some MMO's do not like to reduce the number of servers they maintain despite low population levels as the marketing perception is that the game is failing....but being upfront and saying that we have temporary servers in place to handle the "Boxing Day" crowd and they will disappear after the rush settles cannot be perceived as anything but logical planning. As to testing server loads I am going to assume that the technical ability is out there to do this, not to mention isn't this part of what Beta testing is meant to discover.

So here is my completely non-technical question.

Is there something unique about a server structure that makes it unique to that game only (other than the game software that is)? I mean would it not be somewhat sensible to for example: temporarily rent servers, install your game managing/drm software in preparation for this glut and then pull those excess servers down as the glut returns to normal player participation levels?

Or is this simply a case of why spend the money to ensure sufficient space is available when we can simply add servers to grow with the demand which means launch day will slways suck.

You are right about an initial launch day demand. It always happens. There are lots of graphs and post-mortems available online that prove it out.

Remember that SimCity had a phased launch for that very reason.

Many major server-involved games will do this. They start in one territory (usually the one nearest the developer) and then slowly expand to the rest of the globe over the following weeks.

Lots of people (including reviewers around the globe) noted that on day one they had US servers only. People in Europe, Oceana, and other parts of the world were complaining about ping times and how servers were entirely based in the US. By taking steps to avoid the multi-step launch they unintentionally contribute to the problem of it being a difficult launch.


That is probably why Valve does employ Google to handle their servers. Google has the capacity to add many servers for launch week and reduce them later as they are unneeded --- for a cost, of course.

I understand DRM is a tricksome beast and that piracy of games is way out of whack - though this situation has been around for as long as I can remember, the only real change being the increased ease of sharing pirated games around the net to the point that it is akin to the commonality of the VCR and it's use to copy films, tv programs in breach of copyright etc. The irony of a recent game on Steam being greenlit after using Pirate Bay also comes to mind.

I also understand that come the launch day of any major title there is going to be glut of people trying to play and that this glut will most likely hang around for a few days.

I know that some MMO's do not like to reduce the number of servers they maintain despite low population levels as the marketing perception is that the game is failing....but being upfront and saying that we have temporary servers in place to handle the "Boxing Day" crowd and they will disappear after the rush settles cannot be perceived as anything but logical planning. As to testing server loads I am going to assume that the technical ability is out there to do this, not to mention isn't this part of what Beta testing is meant to discover.

So here is my completely non-technical question.

Is there something unique about a server structure that makes it unique to that game only (other than the game software that is)? I mean would it not be somewhat sensible to for example: temporarily rent servers, install your game managing/drm software in preparation for this glut and then pull those excess servers down as the glut returns to normal player participation levels?

Or is this simply a case of why spend the money to ensure sufficient space is available when we can simply add servers to grow with the demand which means launch day will slways suck.

It is simply a case of why spend the money to ensure sufficient resources is available when the load will decrease after the initial rush and while the customers will complain most are idiots who forgive and forget before the next game is released anyway. I'm still boycotting 2 companies because of their past fuckups, Sony and Ubisoft) and i've started buying from one company again because of how much they've improved (Microsoft) (Allthough part of their improvement was forced by various governments its still an improvement and i don't care why they do the right thing, as long as they do it)

As a customer the only sane response is to boycot the owners of those companies (If you know who the owners are, otherwise just boycotting the company in question is better than nothing), voting with your wallet is the only thing that helps. The shareholders/investors tend to demand the highest possible return on their investment, if treating customers/workers/the enviroment/competitors/kittens/whatever else you personally care about, poorly results in bigger profits then they will be treated poorly, if doing the right thing results in bigger profits then big "evil" corporations will become saints (or atleast try their best to look like saints)

While one persons money doesn't add up to much it will have an effect if a lot of people do the same.

I agree with the 'vote with your wallet'. I go to the movies for the movies that truly great. The rest, I just wait for the DVD and *rent* it.

The problem is as the video game industry is now widely expanded, it's more and more hard to vote with your wallet, especially for games like SimCity because that's the typical game which may interest people which doesn't played video games.

So in the end, "core" gamers might become a minority and their actions will be insignificant.

Of course it has some good sides, but not for this. And I also fear a good part of games become shallow like Hollywood movies in order to please a broader audience.

I think the bigger picture about these sorts of things that bothers me is not with DRM itself, its just that as someone who manages a portion of a very large corporation, I have an inherent belief (and fortunately my employers tend to go the same way, despite this being a very big company) that a business should always do everything in its power to ensure that its most loyal paying customers are happy first and worry about issues beyond that only when that first criteria is satisfied.

The business I'm in is a service industry that deals with the public. We get complaints constantly, some are legitimate, others not so much. The default, however, is to give freebies and consolation to most of those that complain, provided those complaints are even remotely reasonable. The reasons behind this aren't because we're lazy, or we don't want to deal with angry people, its because accidently denying ONE loyal customer with a legitimate complaint is far worse than letting a hundred get away with something that maybe they shouldn't have.

Once upon a time I used to rail against monthly payment type business models in games. I didn't play an MMO for a long time because of it. But the more I think about it, the more I'm starting to think that this sort of business model might be the way out of this mess. If EA (for example) was dependent on people to continue liking its products over some period of time in order to make a profit... well I can't imagine they'd be doing things the way they are.

Edit: To clarify, I'm not advocating each and every game having a monthly fee associated with it. I'm more thinking about having a AAA version of a service like Gamefly. You pay a monthly fee to play all you want of the games available on the service. I'd be willing to pay a pretty big fee for that sort of thing, probably $100+. Then the service provider would divvy up that money based on which games are being played the most. Thereby creating a direct relationship between a game being played more, and it making money. If you have a launch like SimCity where people want to be playing the game and aren't able to, EA is directly losing money.

To clarify, I'm not advocating each and every game having a monthly fee associated with it. I'm more thinking about having a AAA version of a service like Gamefly. You pay a monthly fee to play all you want of the games available on the service. I'd be willing to pay a pretty big fee for that sort of thing, probably $100+. Then the service provider would divvy up that money based on which games are being played the most. Thereby creating a direct relationship between a game being played more, and it making money. If you have a launch like SimCity where people want to be playing the game and aren't able to, EA is directly losing money.

An interesting idea. I'd love to see something like this. I suppose the real question is if existing power houses could potentially make more money this way than at present. A system where you're free to play whatever, invites more diverse playing. That seems likely to disturb the balance of power we see today.