The thing that boggles my mind is how simple this whole fiasco could have been avoided.
All they needed was an offline mode. That's it. That's all they needed to do.
The whole multiplayer, cloud-computer aspect seems really cool. The ability for players to create their own little region where cities can trade and interact with one another? That sounds awesome! Something like that, alone, should be enough of a piracy deterrent.
With something like that,
separate from the main game, consumers will be intrigued to purchase the game in order to access that content.
Will it deter all pirates? Certainly not. But, it'll be enough of a motivation to not do so.
My favorite example of this; Dark Souls (yeah, yeah, I know a lot of you super hip kids hate it and are all ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY NO STORY UGLY CHARACTERS REPETITION WAAAAAAAH). Sure, I could have pirated Dark Souls and have had a totally isolated single-player experience. But the whole merging of player's worlds, the unique approach to multiplayer, and the whole communication aspect of the rune words, and the thrill of being invaded by another player at any moment entices me to
not pirate it. I couldn't imagine playing DS any other way.
But here, EA created something where you're more enticed to pirate the game, because they eliminated the option of the consumer and, in doing so, eliminated
functionality. By removing the single player experience, they removed the essential functionality of a player's ability to play the game. And they're even removing features now? No more Cheetah Speed?
I think internet connectivity it something that should
enhance a game, not define it. It should be something we
want, not something that is
needed. Sure, I'd be miffed if this kind of multiplayer stuff wasn't available at launch because of server congestion, but if there was an option to play a game solo, it wouldn't be so bad.
You'd be like "shucks, the server is down. Guess I won't be able to start up a COTHville continent with my friends. Oh well--time to play the vanilla offline mode."
Instead, with this is, "shucks, the server is down. Guess I...won't be able to play the game at all? For entire weeks on end? Months?! And the game is gonna lag the crap out and spike everywhere and I CANT EVEN SAVE MY CITY?! WTF IS THIS, THE GAME ISN'T EVEN PLAYABLE--AND WHEN IT IS, IT SUUUUUUUUCKS!!! RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!"
I learned my lesson after I bought Diablo III. I won't be buying Sim City 5, which is a shame because I loved the hell out of that series.
I hope developers learn that the best deterrent to piracy is in upping the quality of your games. Create an experience people
want to be a part of. Use internet connectivity to enhance and expand the game, instead of limiting it.
I mean, just look at what happened to movies and music with the advent of Netflix and iTunes. Once those services came out, piracy for TV shows, movies, and songs went down--not eliminated, of course, but they dropped. Why? Because the average consumer doesn't want to fuss with torrents and cracks and proxy servers when they can drop $8 a month for an entire database of movies and TV shows that can be streamed to them whenever, where ever, and how ever they want.
Eh, rambling. But when don't I do that, honest like?
Enjoy some Baby Metal
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDqaTXqCN-Q