EA: SimCity offline mode 'didn't fit with our vision'

What a crock of shit. This is the damage-control PR machine at its best. Don't insult my intelligence, you fuckface. Your greedy, paranoid company made a greedy, paranoid decision because you saw that Blizzard basically got away with it with Diablo 3 already. So decided that since they can get away with shitting on their customers as long as they are doing it with a much-anticipated title, you can too. Go **** your own face!

What if the EA servers would have handled the capacity of players as normal? It would have been status quo and no one would have cared. It's a city builder ffs. it's like hyenas that find a hobbling gazelle. EA gets what they deserve but please GS, go on to better news next week. TY

Just in case SimCity wasn't crushed under the weight of EA's lies or hadn't burned down from poor "vision"

http://gamerant.com/simcity-hack-destroys-neighbors/

Hey look the only data thing EA's servers actually do(hold your saved city's) is being used to destroy your hard made city's.

Yup that's right the DRM is being used backwards to hack the game and wreck your saves! I sure hope no one here is playing Multi-Player with their city's saved on EA's servers.... Oh wait we all are! Since we had no choice!

I'd have more respect for them if they just said "we wanted to make sure everyone playing the game had paid for it". It's fair enough after all, but they really screwed it up. If you're gonna moan at piracy then force people to be online to check they have a legitimate copy of the game, that's 100% OK - but don't pretend it's anything else. And at least make sure your servers allow those legitimate buyers to play the game. And no priority queueing system? Christ, who coded this, a child? How come EA STILL don't realise a a couple hundred thousand quid on a better server infrastructure is better than weeks of bad publicity. It was in Sky News main headlines ffs. Muppets. Mouth. Foot. Gun. Head.

Basically what has happened is: the gaming community has spoken out about the problems that the game has, and what do they do? Instead of doing what any selfless, self-respecting game developer would do and go about their way to try and fix it, EA have simply done this:

http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/andreblais/andreblais0806/andreblais080600015/3172713-upset-businessman-giving-middle-finger-to-boss-dof-focus-on-hand.jpg

It is a simple act of selfishness on EA's part. Why they would go about doing this without telling us prior to its release, I'll never know. Surely they must have known about the problems that ensue when you have millions and millions of people logging onto the same server at the same time when they did this. But, being EA, they clearly made the game with dollar bills (or pound coins in my case) wedged into their eye sockets, and didn't care that we would have no fun playing this game with those sort of issues.

No excuses. Absolutely none whatsoever. EA should be ashamed of themselves for their selfishness and greed. Completely lost whatever respect I had for them after this. If they think we're just gonna sit here and accept this, they're sorely mistaken.

Wait, even more are praising the game for this way? Where are EA's sources for this...?

Anyway, if this was their vision, why not just call it SimCity Online, that way at least it would have an excuse to be, you know, online.

I am really getting tired of companies declaring that they made a decision so that is now what we want.

It works the other way. Consumers declare what they want, and you meet that need. Consumers wanted an offline single player game. You make that game.

If the developer has a vision for a connected experience then include that as well.

Developers need to understand that only I can change my mind. Certainly like anyone I can be surprised, convinced or proven wrong but you can't make me change my mind by declaring what I want.

I loved Sim City 4, and when I saw that they were making a new Sim City, I was REALLY excited. Of course, EA decided to destroy it (go figure, RIP C&C) and my enthusiasm quickly died down.

It's depressing really. Sim City is, at its heart, a single-player game. You can't just take a series known for something and completely change it in the next game. I understand spin-offs, but this is THE next entry in this series and it is completely different. Obviously, I would have liked an online mode, but to completely center the game around it is ridiculous. Heck, this whole server issue could have been avoided if they just did what we wanted them to do in the first place.

I can't believe that I'm the only person who looks for SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS and EVOLUTION in each iteration of a series rather than a complete change in direction. You know, Bethesda has its problems, but at least each game they put out improves on the last one in a meaningful way (although Morrowind-Oblivion was less improvement than dumbing-down, but I digress). They are successful for it, and their sales show that. Why EA doesn't see that, I'll never know or understand.

I won't be buying anything more from EA, and I suggest you all do the same. The more money/sales these morons get, the longer this ridiculousness ensues. Vote with your wallet people, and make sure your friends do the same.

Sorry about that.

Same old pattern: (1) EA and its subdivisions make a poor development decision; (2) that poor decision leads to a broken or consumer unfriendly product; (3) outrage results; (4) an EA speakerbox comes out to release an excuse behind their poor decision only making matters worse. My advice: a bit of humility goes along way. Great game publishers and developers are willing to admit when they have made a mistake. There is a reason why Valve's Gabe Newell is so well liked while Blizzard's Jay Wilson is thoroughly despised.

Lucy Bradshaw is about as wishy washy as you can get.

It was about a week ago that I read an article where Bradshaw said they might look in to some sort of offline mode as an apology for all the problems SimCity has had. Now, Bradshaw says that an offline mode is not in their "vision" for the game. Maybe in a few days she will say that Maxis is working on an offline mode and will then contradict herself and trip over her laptop.

Frankly, if Maxis's is smart, they will stop letting Lucy Bradshaw make any kind of public statement because she is hurting the company's public relations by making a bad situation worse.

Maybe the next SimCity game will be like SimCity 4 with an OPTIONAL online aspect.

more lies from the devil's servants

Translation:"buy the game and don't use the hacked offline version"

They are clearly trying to say that they have better features in the online version. They might prove their point by adding free convincing online features but I doubt they will.

I get the always online, but a feature for offline would have been nice. Too bad I'll pass.

But SimCity is NOT an MMO.

Benito and Kevin wear the same glasses... just saying...

it's not EA's fault. if consumers stop buying, EA will never pull off something like this.

Didn't fit with their vision? They need to get their vision checked...at this point, I think the blind have better vision than Maxis. Congratulations Maxis...because of your vision, I will not purchase your product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=e-LE0ycgkBQ&NR=1

EA at it´s best, simcity.com homepage, check out all the flashing and scrolling text, it´s a f***ing insult, cheating and lying, scamming people. 10 out of 10 score ? "A Masterpiece" ? You are worst than mafia, your "game" doesn´t worth s**t, judging by the colossal amount of bugs, dumbed, watered down shallow content only to be ripping off people later in DLC and microtransactions. Not even mentioning DRM & server crap. The only people who "liked" this will quickly dislike it when they get home and try your "product", only to find out they have been scammed. And please EA, don´t give up now, continue fixing it and loose more money for my enjoyment.

Boycott, Boycott !

If your vision is screwing the customer, then of course offline isn't in your vision.

MMO, Multi-player, F2P proved to be piracy-proof and it seems it will be part of our future.

Single-player games might be dying in the future, specifically on the PC because of piracy, and on the Consoles because of piracy and used sales.

Seems to me it's just a too big to care take it or leave it attitude. Absulutley no ear open to what the consumer wants. But just a business model on how to fleece people for their money.

Congradulations EA, you're on your way to destroying what I loved about gaming. Lets get back to hearing what the gaming community wants or at the least what they paid for.

-A gamer since Atari/C64 days.