SimCity 4 > Miscellany > SimCity 2013
For all the wonderful things in this year's release of SimCity, the one thing that is not wonderful is its digital rights management (DRM), which forces the player to have an Internet connection in order to save their game state. If the potential player does not have an Internet account at all, or has dial-up (it does exist, you know), then the poor sap is out of luck.
EA, the publisher of SimCity, is notorious for telling dissenters to its DRM schemes to eat s◊◊◊ and die. EA is so vicious that it threatens to ban anyone from all its products who knows about a bug or glitch in its beta version of SimCity but fails to report it. (That ensured waves of rage and refusal of players to try out the beta.) It has even banned a beta tester for mildly complaining about the DRM. This is why EA is one of the most hated of game companies.
And all this was before the game was released on first week of March 2013.If EA's wondering how it could have outmaneuvered Bank of America in a race to the bottom, reputation-wise, it needs look no further than this. When an entertainment company is chosen by 64% of 250,000 voters as being worse than an entity that doubled its customers' interest rates for no apparent reason and allegedly cost taxpayers more than $1 billion when it sold toxic mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, there's a serious flaw in that company's relationship with its customers.
Callous actions like this only serve to further cement EA's reputation as one of the worst companies in America. Legitimate complaints should never result in banning. Even if EA isn't interested in hearing the downside of its
always-onDRM, it should at least have the broad shoulders to take the criticism without behaving like thin-skinned thug.
The reviews of SimCity 2013 were mostly negative — so negative that Amazon has pulled the game from its site, and Penny Arcade (which has posted two strips satirizing the game) is recommending gamers to stay away from it. It's
impressive to hear about EA being surprised by the number of people
wanting to play the game: What company fails to plan for success? Stay
away.
EA knew disaster was coming with SimCity 2013. It could not have been ignorant of what was going to happen, unless the ignorance is on purpose. Indeed, it most likely is on purpose: EA will continue to push the online requirement, passing the costs of any
outages along to the customers in the form of useless purchases and
higher game prices.
(Oh, and by the way, I did not buy SimCity 2013, so I did not get ripped off. Haaa-ha!) It is guaranteed to ensure bankruptcy for EA, unemployment for its non-suits, loss of value for shareholders, and for posterity the equation EA executive = idiot
. Does it care? Nope.
When a retailer stops selling your game because your s◊◊◊ is so busted, and people try to get the money they spent on your nega-game back and you get mad, it seems like that would be pretty bad. Maybe it should be! Maybe it should matter. Does it? Well, seeing as they pull this shit more or less on the regular, we can say pretty clearly that it does not.
As far as I am concerned, SimCity 2013 does not and will never exist. And if it does not exist, then why should I buy it … especially if the game has proven to be a piece of s◊◊◊ that would never truly be mine no matter how much money I would pay for it. This is why, in my opinion, and I repeat, SimCity 4, released ten years ago this past January, is the final chapter in the simulation game's saga. SimCity is over.