Amazon reinstates SimCity digital copies
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
[UPDATE] Retailer has made digital copies of new city-building game available for purchase.
[UPDATE] Following the publication of this story, Amazon has made digital copies of SimCity again available for purchase.
The original story follows below
Amazon has stopped selling digital copies of SimCity. As spotted by GameSpot sister site Giant Bomb, the online retailer is no longer allowing consumers to purchase the digital version of Electronic Arts' just-released city-building PC game.
"Many customers are having issues connecting to the SimCity servers," Amazon said on its website. "EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed."
The boxed version of SimCity remains available for purchase through Amazon.
SimCity launched Tuesday in North America and was beset by various server issues that in some instances have kept gamers from logging in. EA said yesterday that it is "confident" that such issues will be resolved for the game's United Kingdom launch tomorrow.
EA announced today that it had disabled "non-critical" SimCity features to address server woes.
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
680 comments
1 Like Its not hard 2 predict... u sell 1 mil copies well then your servers need to be able to hold 1 mil players. They did not stress test the servers enough. It's irresponsible and immoral to sell more copies of a game if you cant insure the playability of those copies.
You don't see hotels doing this shit with room reservation and when you get to the hotel there are 10 people fighting for the same god damn room. :))
The problem is they want always-on Internet connection with games to maintain DRM to stop piracy but they don't invest enough money nbthe servers to run it. They want to run it on a shoestring budget, well you can't. eA need to spend less on advertising and more on servers.
@CwlHeddwyn Well said. I would also say that attempting to predict how many servers u'd need would be very hard indeed though. What with digital downloads these days, they don't have a ceiling on the amount of copies they can potentially sell on day1 (in the old days u'd have to actually print discs and distribute them meaning that once that finite supply ran out, ppl just went without)
Building more servers to cope with demand takes time though (especially if it's a global thing...many different datacentres in many different countries) and the issue of lack of server capacity diminishes over time as people get bored and stop playing the game.
Ultimately, for me, making a predominantly single player game (*cough* diablo3, simcity) online ONLY is bad form. I hope this trend does not continue. By all means add multiplayer components to ur single-player games but don't remove offline play entirely.
I will not be buying any game that does this. If every1 abandoned games that did this then perhaps developers would get the hint. Perhaps they should spend time looking at releasing dedicated server packages and let the consumers themselves run the servers? A whole industry (game service providers) sprang up to fulfil this need in the Quake/Unreal dedicated server era.......
1 Like Amazon selling a broken game? EA needs to do a serious beta extension first.
They took r jobs! I mean they took r money!
Just wondering anyone know of a boycotting EA group on facebook, or something along the lines of that?
Be good to put some numbers in EAs face to show them how much they are damaging their company as well, as focus on and promote other companies which make great games and treat well their customers...
Just enquiring to if their focus is just anti-EA, or anit-EA (as a draw in) pro- good companies, and promotion of solid game companies...
@Meatbrawl Hey see EA Fake marketing! http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=521175&page=5
Pay attenttion on the User: ImJustin replies.!
At least Amazon cares enough to warn users that there is a well known issue with the game. They have a nice warning at the time of my post stating: Many customers are having issues connecting to the "SimCity" servers. EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed. Please visit https://help.ea.com/en/simcity/simcity for more information.
@CaptainGamespot What mess was EA being amateur and don´t have tons of servers for people pay.
1 Like A new phrase in the video game industry has been termed for all future video game release failures "They pulled a Simcity!"
@Wish01 Uhh, that might have to go to Aliens: Colonial Marines as that was the first for this year, or maybe Medal of Honor: Warfighter if you count last year. If it's the DRM you are talking about then it's StarCraft II.
@TitanPolaris @Wish01 You can play SC2 offline though... just have to activate online... however I'm travelling atm and battle.net keeps locking me out for logging in at different places :( (Keep forgetting to disconnect from internet when I start it..) So mostly I just watch it streamed :)
1 Like @Meatbrawl @TitanPolaris @Wish01 That's what they have do to with Sim City in the future make it a offline game! SC2 had this problem when it first launched, but EA is not Blizzard so tech support is not going to happen in a timely fassion for those who did not bail yet like I did and request a refund. At least Blizzard was very quick about correcting these problems, EA I have no trust in them to fix things if it doesn't make Madden type profits for them.
9 Like So much for digital-only games being the future. I'm sorry that all those people who purchased the game are having problems but I'm glad it happened to a major publisher like EA because it shows what greed has done to this industry.
@ddg4005 You have a point... but this issue has nothing to do with digital copy games. AODRM is the problem.
@ddg4005 Well said, its about time we showed companies like EA that we are sick of being screwed. I sure as hell wont be buying their crap in future.
The longer they fix their servers, the closer they are of shutting them out... With the reactions of everyone who bought the game, i can't see those server opened more than 2 or 3 years... Especially if they release another simcity soon!
8 Like Any single-player game that requires an internet connection or an online account is an automatic no-buy for me.
2 Like This Simcity launch failure has become a part of gaming history. Hope we do not have another video game recession similar to what happened following the release of the Atari 2600 game ET where there was a mass burial of unsold cartridges in a landfill and overall hatred to the gaming industry for a few years.
With EA and their current tactics like online DRM, microtransactions and forcing Origin onto us we may even see a repeat of what happened in the 80s.
@leimonides Well I'm refusing to buy EA games... and know a fair few peeps doing the same... so it's beginning and am certainly a lot more cautious when buying new games...
5 Like You all don't see the bigger picture. EA is actually trying to eradicate wars by uniting the world in hate towards them. It's a noble self sacrifice.
@theend3r Sorry, but I've seen what George Orwell's 1984 can do to the masses. sarcasm.
@lhughey @silvergol Plus maybe post links to the sites after people are done, to get it more views... and so get them to the top... (If that's how they work)
@lhughey @silvergol I'm pretty much only facebook... been too scared to branch out lol... so if you tell me how, I will...
7 Like @silvergol Share on your facebook, twitter or whatever social media you have... only way to stop EA pulling this crap is to make people aware of it... so they don't go through it...
@Meatbrawl @silvergol There's some serious damage control going around, EA submitted an official response saying that they will honor refunds. What they should do is immediately kill that horrid DRM code.
@torres_unix @Meatbrawl @silvergol *shrugs* Doesn't matter... that's the default way they treat their customers... then they should just announce the immediate shutting down of EA.
2 Like yay EA!
After Battlefield 3 release on the PC fiasco I can happily say I've never brought and never will buy another EA product. Hated them for the past 20 years anyway, buying up everything and ruining everything they get their hands on. Paying their rubbish wages and working people to an early grave.
EA is the devil. Burn them.
2 Like @dovonob That's why EA in my mind is the walmart of the game makers!! If you can't beat the compitition just BUY THEM OUT!! Talking about Crytek, DICE, Maxis, BioWare and so on.
@TitanPolaris@dovonob
Thankfully I'm not American so I don't have to put up with Walmart but I know what you're saying, heard many things about them. (I don't mean thankfully I'm not American as in hating on America)
An old friend who I used to work with at Eidos used to say about every EA game, "the illusion of depth". sounds good on the box, looks nice on the screenshots, shallow as zhit gameplay.
as for Bioware, to me they and the Mass Effect games sums up everything that I dislike about modern games. I know its all opinion and everyone is not going to like the same things but I just don't get it. It gives the illusion of this massive free roaming game when in actual fact there's no freedom whatsoever, you can't jump or climb up even the smallest of ledges, you can only get your gun out in specified areas, there's hardly any chests or things to open and find, no real exploration is needed. The fighting is just awful. The Illusion of depth....looks like its a massive, open living breathing world but in actual fact alls i ever did was feel really constrained.
I just want to grab these people, place a copy of Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 in their hands and just say 'just play this mate and you'll understand what computer games used to be like'. Jeez I'd even go round for free and install all the mods for them.
@dovonob @TitanPolaris HAHAHAHA SPOT ON :) All my fave games are like 10 years old and I struggle to find enthusiasm for new games, though I felt Halo 4 is WICKED!!! Love it to bits!!! I would have cried in it, if it wasn't for the chick sitting next to me... only game that has ever done that for me! But that is also thanks to the ground work of the previous games.
2 Like @dovonob @TitanPolaris To my people it's glitz that gets them to buy this crap! They don't even make demos for these games anymore! They figure that the more dumber your consumer base is, the more cash you can make! Games these days are nothing like the old games on the PC and 8-bit/16-bit consoles! They want to give us a product "that's all fizz and no gin" so to speak!
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