EA Built This City on Rocky Ideas...
To do a massive breakdown on the amount of times that Electronic Arts has had public relations happenings (mostly bad) in video games news would likely require a ten-page document. EA has been around for quite some time, but, unlike others, is the production and development studio that has been voted "Worst Company in America" more than once. Needless to say, EA has some issues. One of the biggest issues that it faced for quite some time and in fact, what most of the video game market faced, is the problem of Digital Rights Management, or DRM. Today we'll be looking at what happened when DRM got involved in a little project known as SimCity (2013).
SimCity is an older franchise. The series has been around since its inception by auteur Will Wright back in 1989 for the Amiga and Macintosh. Ever since that point, it has always been a delightful single-player experience that had players managing a city from a top-down view; controlling the streets and districts like a benevolent (or malevolent) god. Come time for the sixth iteration of the game, EA, having now bought out Maxis Studios created by Will Wright, wanted to shake up the formula and introduce a way to ship out content in a new way that could last for periods past release: DRM.
DRM is a system that lets the company keep track of who is buying their games legally as well as capable of releasing patches at a steadier rate so that the game is always updated. This is a good measure on paper, however, when players initially booted up their newly-bought game, expecting a joyful single-player experience, they were quickly gagged with server issues as EA's servers fell under.
The problem with DRM is that, in order to actually play, it is a requirement to be online. If players couldn't connect, they couldn't do anything and their money is ultimately wasted. EA scrambled to attempt to free up their servers by deactivating different modes that they were using to track scoreboards or trading systems, but it didn't actually solve the problems of playing the game.
Eventually, as opposed to contacting players and dealing with their digital devilry, EA released an announcement stating, "EA Origin has requested to pause all SimCity marketing campaigns temporarily, until further notice. We have deactivated all SimCity text links and creative and we ask you to please remove any copy promoting SimCity from your website for the time-being (...)".
In order to try and make up for this, EA allowed players who bought the game to have one free download from their online library, but the damage was done. Former fans were calling for petitions to release it from DRM as well as boycotts for future games. All in all, a bad call indeed.
SimCity is an older franchise. The series has been around since its inception by auteur Will Wright back in 1989 for the Amiga and Macintosh. Ever since that point, it has always been a delightful single-player experience that had players managing a city from a top-down view; controlling the streets and districts like a benevolent (or malevolent) god. Come time for the sixth iteration of the game, EA, having now bought out Maxis Studios created by Will Wright, wanted to shake up the formula and introduce a way to ship out content in a new way that could last for periods past release: DRM.
DRM is a system that lets the company keep track of who is buying their games legally as well as capable of releasing patches at a steadier rate so that the game is always updated. This is a good measure on paper, however, when players initially booted up their newly-bought game, expecting a joyful single-player experience, they were quickly gagged with server issues as EA's servers fell under.
The problem with DRM is that, in order to actually play, it is a requirement to be online. If players couldn't connect, they couldn't do anything and their money is ultimately wasted. EA scrambled to attempt to free up their servers by deactivating different modes that they were using to track scoreboards or trading systems, but it didn't actually solve the problems of playing the game.
Eventually, as opposed to contacting players and dealing with their digital devilry, EA released an announcement stating, "EA Origin has requested to pause all SimCity marketing campaigns temporarily, until further notice. We have deactivated all SimCity text links and creative and we ask you to please remove any copy promoting SimCity from your website for the time-being (...)".
In order to try and make up for this, EA allowed players who bought the game to have one free download from their online library, but the damage was done. Former fans were calling for petitions to release it from DRM as well as boycotts for future games. All in all, a bad call indeed.
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