I can't find the article offhand but it was from reddit was Jack Tretton flat out said they are rejecting any sort of DRM that prevents people from reselling the disc.

He went on to say they cannot control everything a publisher does like charging to play multiplayer ala onepass etc) but this is really a key point for publishers to not be able to tell you that you can't sell the game to a friend.

I'm not saying you are 100% wrong and it will never happen but Sony is pushing pretty hard in the Anti-DRM direction. I think they realize it's one of the things that set them apart from Xbox.

Steam is still DRM, can't sell games, and still requires Internet to download, activate, etc.

Anyone here suspect, as I do, that Sony is merely saying they aren't requiring DRM? They will probably support any and all DRM systems the publishers come up with...

Not sure its any different from MS at the end of the day.

*quality

it is sad it has come to this, that we celebrate a feature that has existed for decades. still a massive sigh of relief, and a hilarious video. the first thing I thought when the E3 attendance started screaming in applause at the announcement of no drm and used games sales still exist etc, I felt sad and happy at the same time. Sad it has come to this, happy Sony and Nintendo didn't follow.

Fuck you Microsoft.

And yes, I like Steam and all, but I recommend getting it from www.gog.com if you haven't purchased it yet. Support DRM free gaming.

A little SS2 trvia - Bioshock's level design aesthetics is loosely based around one of the levels in SS2.

It's all gone a bit shit hasn't it?

I don't have a television so meh to all that stuff.

To be honest I've never been into used games that much so whatever DRM they're cooking up is not an issue for me personally. But of course the principle is the issue here.
The requirement to tie games into your account is egregious. What if they did this with Blurays? Would that fly with the general populace?

I remember when Origin was the premier developer; Wing Commander, Ultima, System Shock, Shadowcaster; then EA bought them. They gradually ruined all of their properties (Ultima 9, Privateer 2), then cancelled the sequels due to poor sales, then shuttered the studio. Now, as a final insult, they've cut off Origin's head and sewn it onto the body of a shitty DRM/DD system.

Holy shit, does EA suck.

All of the regular information sources were pointing at a failed DRM launch. Looking to beta sources can only get you so far, beta is a beta. Whose to say that a "bug" isn't a "feature". After playing the game for a bit, I can see that much of the "first impressions" done by reviewers who looked passed the DRM still didn't uncover some of the real underlying problems and instead were stuck on problems where there was a lack of understanding.
Example; Often the focus would be on things like "I have enough power, yet my buildings arent getting powered". Took me a little while to figure out that each building has a capacity that needs to get filled before it will stop sucking up power from the grid and allowing further buildings down the electrical grid to take in power.
I bought the game knowing I could live past most of the problems presented. (I play mostly on off-peak hours and my play style meant that it would take about 3-4 hours before I came close to maxing out the size of the city, compared to the commonly reported 1 hour)

I enjoyed the game for a while, it was a new and different type of simcity. But after a while, once the understanding of the mechanics settled in, there is an inherent problem with how the current game is running. It goes back to the original point of not enough focus on the actual game, even if the DRM, marketing mishaps, and community backlash/suppression is ignored.

@FlowersInHisHair @aimpoint. In my opinion there are two major issues that caused the game/launch to be such a disaster. I am not speaking of technical reasons or gameplay, which are solvable through patches and more game servers. I'm speaking of the one thing you can't change and thats the first impression.

First of all, they advertised the game wrong. They focused on the glass box engine, the general look and in the early stages made it look just like a very good reboot of the series. But old fans of franchise don't get you that many new customers. So they jumped on the social game train, in hopes of acquiring a new set of potential customers. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with that. Players who just wanted to play the game on their own could do just so, just like players who want to build a huge city together with their Facebook friends. At least this was what the marketing made us believe. In hindsight they should have marketed the whole game as some kind of sim city online. Which would have set the right expectations into customers and prevented a part of the huge shitstorm that followed.

Secondly, and this rule should be written in caps, DON'T LIE! Or at least DON'T GET CAUGHT LYING! If you say it needs always on DRM, you better make sure your game only works online.

Saying that DRM is the reason of the Sim City debacle would be very far from the truth. Sure there is a love-hate relationship between players and publishers, especially regarding DRM. But in the end of the day the urge to play the game is bigger than the personal objections against the "evil" publisher.

Because to be honest, this is neither the first game to have an always-online DRM, nor is it the first to have server issues after the launch, nor is it the first game that wasn't as bug free as the user might wish. After that being said, in my opinion firing EA's CEO (which happened this monday) was damage control at the wrong end, they should have sacked the whole PR department.

I agree. To me, the DRM really isn't the biggest gameplay problem. I'm tired of having problems crop up like "worker shortage, zone more residential to get more workers" when there's NO ROOM LEFT IN MY POSTAGE-STAMP SIZED CITY. Seriously, DRM and server issues aside, the biggest problem for me is the playable area in each city. Problems like these cannot be solved within your own city's limits, yet when I start a "dormitory town" to supply workers, they always complain about unemployment. I should be able to fix these problems in the same city they crop up in. The traffic pathfinding system is seriously broken too. Emergency vehicles don't even try to get past other traffic!

Yeah, the whole simcity saga has really taken a downturn. A lot of the negative press has been on the always on DRM and the conflicting reports of how "hard" it would be to turn it off when its already been disabled by a few users.

The focus should move towards this and actual gameplay problems. The traffic issues are really bad as well with sims making really retarded driving decisions. Not to mention that the population count isnt accurate, as well as the problems with "not enough workers" even after people have built entire cities with nothing but residential zoning. There are still endless bugs, like streetcars disappearing or casino towns not being viable thanks to tourist problems.

The whole DRM issue seems strange to me because its like arguing that a poorly designed game has DRM and not the other way around. The game does work well at times but it seems that the whole "agent" system they use that starts to make the game fun at the same time seems to cause problems and take away from the fun.

I hope EA learns from SimCity, and either comes up with better DRM, or learns not to use it at all because of this.

Companies that think they are in control of their community often learn the hard way, that the community is in charge.

The movie industry is still trying to recover from the lesson bittorrent is teaching them.

I was really looking forward to playing this game, until I heard of the DRM and I knew then it would be a big problem and decided not to get it, but I would never have dreamed it'd turn into the FUBAR mess that it has become. And the constant lying and bullshit EA and Maxis say is ridiculous.
I hope they'll add a single player option, offline play, increase the ridiculously small city size and offer a formal apology to everyone for all the outrageous lying. But this is EA, ain't gonna happen

If you gave EA money for this abortion, you are part of the reason why some publishers (EA, Ubisoft, Activision...) want to treat PC games as $60 rentals, and you are most definitely part of the problem. There are an ABUNDANCE of better, cheaper PC games developed by companies who want your business and won't treat you as just an open wallet. Sim City was a great franchise once, but just like Diablo, Crysis, and anything from Bioware nowadays, it's been consolized, socialized, and/or monetized into crap that most PC gamers want nothing to do with.

This "real cities do not exist in a bubble" is just corporate blathering to justify the always-on DRM, as if fans of the series have forgotten it has always been, first and foremost, a single player game, and a very enjoyable one at that. It is ABSOLUTELY IDIOTIC to force such a drastic change in gameplay/genre into a game that has been so defined by it's gameplay/genre over the years. Same thing when EA remade Syndicate as a FPS. A FPS Syndicate ISN'T SYNDICATE! I don't want to play with anyone else. I don't want my fucking savegames on your shitty server, even if it was an awesome server. If I give you $60 for your game, it's now MY game, and you leave me the fuck alone!

AAARRG! It's like PC game developers are all being run by fucking console kiddies and greedy shitstain corporate types who never played NetQuake or DWANGO, or Heretic, or System Shock, or X-Com, or any of the Black Isle or pre-Dragon Age 2 Bioware stuff, or any Diablo without a "III" behind it, or Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, or the Ultimas, or the Roberta Williams adventure games, or Wing Commander, or Tie Fighter, or MechWarrior. Deus Ex! A full fucking Deus EX play-through would be required before I'd even THINK about hiring your ass to develop a new PC game! On second thought, play it three times, once for each ending!

uuuuugh... so... anyway... yeah, fuck EA.

Ok, fine. Rage.

Always on DRM usually refers to requiring a constant (or near constant) connection.

Steam checks in when you boot, and when you try to load a game. If it does anything in between I've *never* been booted from a non-multiplayer game due to my internet connection once I'm in (some companies will throw on more DRM on top of Steam when you buy their game, but I've avoided most draconian DRM's). With steam if your internet's down you can play offline, up to a month I believe..?

That's the big difference - with true always on you're far more at the mercy of the server's status(es). You're good (to as much extent as you can be) with games like WoW that had huge production budgets, and now take on huge profit.

Smaller houses, releasing a game with what they believe is the minimum hardware to get by with (because they always expect their user base to begin to wane after the initial purchasing rush)... you get this ^

EA's got a habit of retiring servers the moment the profit from sales seems depleted, so you have that looming somewhere in the future if this is a game you end up cherishing.