Yep, SimCity Still Isn’t Working

11 years ago

March 7, 2013 at 8:45 am

See that image? If you try to play SimCity on the US servers right now, you probably will. It’s a little different from the image we saw last night, and the server issues we saw all throughout yesterday, but the problem remains the same: people who bought SimCity can’t play it.

The servers that were supposed to reopen at 7pm GMT (6am AEDT) are still not open. It seems like you can play on some European servers at the moment, although that doesn’t help anyone who has already started cities on regions with their friends on the US servers. SimCity his retail shelves in Australia on March 8.

SimCity‘s Twitter account also sent out a message that it’s patching the servers right now:

Mayors — at 11:40am we’ll be issuing a patch to the North America East 1 and 2 servers. More info here: http://t.co/Zg6IokmFl0

— SimCity (@simcity) March 6, 2013

So, yep. The game that went on sale yesterday still isn’t working. Hopefully this mess of a launch is fixed up soon. We’ll keep you updated in the meantime.

Comments

66 responses to “Yep, SimCity Still Isn’t Working”

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srg

March 7, 2013 at 8:49 am

I have a fearsome Schadenboner right now. Sadly, EA and other companies won’t learn jack from this.

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1. kaflooey
  
  March 7, 2013 at 9:12 am
  
  lol gross.
  
  Reply
2. crotchdot
  
  March 7, 2013 at 9:17 am
  
  No, they’ll learn. They’ll learn that they can continue doing whatever they want and the customer will keep coming back for more.
  
  Reply
  1. Alex Williams
    
    March 7, 2013 at 9:26 am
    
    Getting a serious case of Schadenfreude from watching all these issues…
    
    Reply
  2. bangers
    
    March 7, 2013 at 12:09 pm
    
    EA sure make it easy for me to keep my boycott going. Shame more people don’t have the nerve.
    
    Reply
    1. bangers
      
      March 7, 2013 at 12:15 pm
      
      I’m just going to leave this here: http://i.imgur.com/wA03tRY.jpg
      
      Reply
3. techgamerguy
  
  March 7, 2013 at 9:55 am
  
  Jack lol
  
  Reply
4. Greg
  
  March 7, 2013 at 10:05 am
  
  You sir have been watching too much Avenue Q
  
  Reply
5. Scroto
  
  March 7, 2013 at 1:03 pm
  
  No they wont learn jack from it because we will continue to buy their products. Big business only cares when it affects their bottom line.
  
  Reply
GregT

March 7, 2013 at 8:53 am

Man, I sat through this nonsense for Diablo 3 because of the pedigree of the franchise and Blizzard’s (then) bank of goodwill. And it wasn’t worth the hassle, as it turned out. Sim City isn’t nearly as must-buy and EA has about zero goodwill in the bank. These issues have stopped me buying at launch and, practically speaking, if I don’t buy it this week I’m probably never going to buy it.

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1. ashr
  
  March 7, 2013 at 11:42 am
  
  exactly why I didn’t buy at launch (and the “always on single player game” again)
  
  Reply
spaghett

March 7, 2013 at 8:53 am

EA You’ve done it again

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wizz-fizz

March 7, 2013 at 8:58 am

….and yet people wonder why we complain about, and don’t like, always on DRM?
Baffles the Mind o.O

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gintoki

March 7, 2013 at 9:15 am

No way in hell ill buy this game now.

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mdn

March 7, 2013 at 9:20 am

Want this game. Hate EA for what they’ve done. Bugger it, I’m making my own city building game without all this crap.

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1. Blackwater
  
  March 7, 2013 at 9:24 am
  
  With blackjack and hookers?
  
  Reply
  1. andre
    
    March 7, 2013 at 9:45 am
    
    In fact! Forget the city-building… And the Black Jack!
    
    Reply
  2. synesthetic
    
    March 7, 2013 at 9:45 am
    
    You know what…forget the city building game
    
    Reply
    1. mdn
      
      March 7, 2013 at 9:55 am
      
      Game of the year, ALL YEARS!
      
      Reply
Jean-Luc Picard

March 7, 2013 at 9:21 am

The industry needs to crash so that it can rise again from the ashes. I’m disgusted by all the DRM, DLC, failing servers, and sequel after sequel after sequel. The true innovation rests in the hands of the modding communities and indie developers.

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1. synesthetic
  
  March 7, 2013 at 9:47 am
  
  Does the enterprise have drm issues in it’s software?
  
  Reply
  1. braaains
    
    March 7, 2013 at 10:10 am
    
    Wait until EA take it over, then you’ll have to pay a microtransaction to go to warp speed, otherwise spend centuries traversing the galaxy at impulse power.
    
    Reply
2. mikeockertz
  
  March 7, 2013 at 10:49 am
  
  Then make it so Jean-Luc.
  
  Reply
ezk

March 7, 2013 at 9:23 am

Since the game uses cloud saving for cities and I’m forced to either buy or not play it… I think I’ll buy this on payday.

Hopefully these launch issues are sorted by the 15th.

Always online games generally have problematic launches… whoever didn’t see this coming needs to reassess their thought process. :p

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soulblade64

March 7, 2013 at 9:25 am

The problem, is it still DRM if it’s built up as a game feature… In this case you strip away the DRM, and the game breaks.

Utimately it wasn’t necessary to do it online only, EA have done it for some god awful reason (As if they didn’t look at the D3 launch and say “hmm, what can we learn here”).

Anyone who bought this game really does get what they deserve though, you knew it would be online only, you knew EA have a bad reputation, you knew there would be issues with stability.

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1. ezk
  
  March 7, 2013 at 9:39 am
  
  I’d say it’s smart from one point of a business perspective… being the elimination of piracy, with its always-online nature, cloud saving for your cities, etc.
  
  It’s just a shame that EA is practically known for having a horrible online service, essentially shafting the customers who’ve put faith in them to actually deliver for once.
  
  Sure it sucks at the moment, but once they iron out the problems (assuming they do/can) it should be pretty decent… judging by my time spent with the beta, anyway.
  
  It just sucks that the people who’ve paid for their product can’t use it from day 1.
  
  Reply
  1. fathermiso
    
    March 7, 2013 at 1:27 pm
    
    ezk you don’t seem to understand piracy.
    
    The sort of person who pirates games are not going to go “Online DRM, er I have to pay for this game now and go out and buy it,”
    
    They’ll just wait a week and wait for a cracked version which will likely run better then the DRM version.
    
    As a business perspective, myself and everyone I know who was going to pay for this game will not anymore because of the DRM.
    
    They will never get MORE sales with DRM, The idiots based their losses on how many people downloaded the game. They fail to account that people just wont pay for it and when they drive all the people willing to pay for the games to piracy they just turn around and say, need more DRM they are pirating the game.
    
    Reply
    1. ezk
      
      March 7, 2013 at 3:15 pm
      
      I understand piracy fine, but this game uses cloud saving to save your cities, which requires always online connectivity… unless I’ve been informed incorrectly.
      
      Rendering pirated copies practically useless.
      
      Reply
      1. roaringarse
        
        March 7, 2013 at 5:29 pm
        
        there’s typically a hack workaround in the pirate version for whatever online features are supposedly “necessary”.
      2. ezk
        
        March 7, 2013 at 6:40 pm
        
        Well I haven’t seen any versions up for download yet… but we’ll see.
        I dunno how they’d get around cloud saves without altering how the game works, but again, we’ll see I suppose.
      3. roaringarse
        
        March 8, 2013 at 5:09 pm
        
        Skid Row is said to be working on it.. don’t know when they’ll release it though.
2. jem
  
  March 7, 2013 at 10:00 am
  
  And then they’ll shut the servers off in 18 months anyway.
  
  Reply
  1. mikeockertz
    
    March 7, 2013 at 10:56 am
    
    Precisely Jem! I can still play every Sim City previous to this edition at any time I want, whether I have a web connection or not. I still play 4 occasionally, despite it being released 10 years ago. There’s no way in hell EA will have Sim CIty servers still running in 10yrs. Not even 5 yrs. So what happens then? Do I still own the game, even though I might not be able to play it whatsoever? Does this man throwing down some cash for it now means I’m effectively only renting it until such time that EA kills it’s servers because the game is no longer ‘profitable’ for them. Here’s hoping very few other companies follow this example. (I’d say none, but you gotta be realistic, Ubi will prolly try this crap in the near future too.)
    
    Reply
trex

March 7, 2013 at 9:45 am

This is why I don’t buy ANY game within in the first month of its release (although Tomb Raider is tempting).

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1. phlaiman
  
  March 7, 2013 at 9:46 am
  
  That doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would buying a game that doesn’t have these crazy DRM extremes have any issues at all in the first month?
  
  Reply
  1. liraniel
    
    March 7, 2013 at 9:56 am
    
    Skyrim isn’t always-online, and it had issues a go-go in the first couple of months.
    
    Reply
    1. ezk
      
      March 7, 2013 at 10:03 am
      
      Really? Skyrim was 100% fine for me from day 1…
      
      Reply
      1. mikeockertz
        
        March 7, 2013 at 10:58 am
        
        Yeah, it’s hit and miss. I had almost no problems on PC before and after the patches, but my wife has been having several with hers (it’s unpatched). I wish they could patch a fix for her yelling at the screen…
      2. ezk
        
        March 7, 2013 at 11:32 am
        
        There’s a fix for that, though it might land you in jail. 😉
      3. liraniel
        
        March 8, 2013 at 9:20 am
        
        My fix was to stop playing. Super depressing, but “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” does not apply when playing buggy video games. And it’s applying to Simcity – I prefer to imagine the game I would want to play (pretty much an updated simcity 4), than play this and have it be a) unplayable and b) not really what I wanted anyway.
        
        I should really look into those simcity 4 mods.
  2. trex
    
    March 7, 2013 at 1:19 pm
    
    It makes perfect sense to me. Here just a few reasons.
    1. I avoid day one bugs/issues, which lately are more like week one.
    2. The has usually been patched to remove annoying gameplay elements (Far Cry 3 UI)
    3. People have compiled guides on tweaking the game to your liking
    4. Lots more reviews to help me decide in case Im on the fence about a game
    5. The game is usually cheaper and sometimes on sale through at least one of the many websitesI use to buy games.
    
    These are some of the reasons buy games on release “makes no sense at all” to me, especially singleplayer games.
    
    Reply
    1. phlaiman
      
      March 7, 2013 at 1:50 pm
      
      I can understand those reasons but you didn’t say they were your reasons originally. In an article specifically talking about connectivity issues of a game you said “This is why I don’t buy ANY game within in the first month of its release “. It’s clearly not why you don’t buy ANY game within the first month – it is a combination of your latest reply.
      
      Reply
      1. trex
        
        March 7, 2013 at 3:26 pm
        
        Next time I’ll be more specific so the internet police don’t get upset.
      2. phlaiman
        
        March 7, 2013 at 3:36 pm
        
        No need to be smarmy. It is obvious that my reply was based on the face value of your post.
phlaiman

March 7, 2013 at 9:45 am

But EA promised that the server issues will all be solved by the time Simcity is released in Aus. They wouldn’t LIE would they?!

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synesthetic

March 7, 2013 at 9:50 am

I’m not buying this game purely for the fact that the beta had these issues, but it shows that EA are just money hungry these days…The problems from the beta still exist, what the hell was the point of the beta if you’re not going to fix the issues that arise?
The dev talked about expanding the city sizes in the future…but i guarantee EA will chuck a price on this.
City expanding DLC $9.95 and like the suckers we are…we will all buy it.

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hayden

March 7, 2013 at 9:55 am

This is a pretty good video on the horrible SC5 DRM, Mr. Serrels. Maybe you should chuck it up as a link to help people understand just how shitty EA has been with this release. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHp91aqWB7M

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brent3000

March 7, 2013 at 10:10 am

Title sums it up… EA in a nut shell

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bluxy

March 7, 2013 at 10:12 am

for starters its not DRM DRM is for singleplayer offline games…. this is an MMO with online features that must be connected

and nearly EVERY game has issues at launch… or are you too yound dumb or bumed to realise this

just play somthing else while the issues get sorted out

if it wasnt EA it would be blizzard or another company ripping you guys off like you say they are…. but your paying for a product and you agree that it doesnt have to work in the user agreement so suck it

Reply
1. srg
  
  March 7, 2013 at 10:31 am
  
  trolls gonna troll
  
  Reply
  1. bluxy
    
    March 7, 2013 at 1:44 pm
    
    hey you signed the agreement
    
    Reply
    1. srg
      
      March 7, 2013 at 3:04 pm
      
      Like hell I did. I’m not going to their party, plenty to do on the right side of the bell curve.
      
      Reply
2. mikeockertz
  
  March 7, 2013 at 11:06 am
  
  Given their rep these days, I’m sceptical any of their products, so I want to try before I buy, but EA, the scumbags they are, have killed that off completely (for that matter, much of the industry too). If I want to try their product, I have to pay them I full first and pray it’s not a pile of ass or get a dodgy first, then go legit if I like it, or see if a friend has grabbed it. If. They generally do the same thing I do, too. Last time I took… ‘precautions’ with an EA product, it was C&C 4. SO glad I didn’t buy that steaming pile of horseshit in the end!
  
  I miss the EA from the 90s. You know, the innovators and their the fantastic games, not the company racing Activision to the bottom for the ‘lowest common denominator’ demographic.
  
  Reply
3. phlaiman
  
  March 7, 2013 at 11:21 am
  
  Except this isn’t an MMO. It is a singleplayer game with some multiplayer/social options. And I will play another game from a different company that isn’t ripping me off, believe me or not there are still plenty of publishers that haven’t entirely sold their souls.
  
  Reply
4. ad
  
  March 7, 2013 at 11:30 am
  
  and nearly EVERY game has issues at launch… or are you too yound dumb or bumed to realise this
  
  While it’s fair to expect bugs with games these days – they’re far more complex than they were 15 years ago – it’s not unreasonable to expect the bloody thing to work.
  
  Reply
  1. bluxy
    
    March 7, 2013 at 1:46 pm
    
    so you expect over a million people connecting to a new server and its not gonna have issues and just WORK? yeah right
    
    nothing personal ad
    
    Reply
    1. ad
      
      March 7, 2013 at 2:30 pm
      
      No offence taken, but this is EA – they’ve got a number of MMOs on the book so they’ve no shortage of servers, and they must have seen what happened with the launch of Diablo 3. Nothing stinks up a launch for on-the-fence buyers by hearing that the game can’t actually be played.
      
      Reply
solut1on

March 7, 2013 at 10:23 am

Worked fine for me at midnight was able to patch it and play it for 30mins to an hour before calling it a night

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blake

March 7, 2013 at 10:27 am

I wonder if all the pirates they somehow converted to paying customers makes up for all the people who won’t buy the game due to the always online requirements such as myself (and the number of burnt customers not coming back to them in the future).

It really is a shame, I saw ‘new Sim City’ on all the blogs a few weeks ago, got excited, read about all the always online stuff, and will now not be giving them any money.

Games that make sense online I’ll grumble but put up with overzealous DRM, but a genre which I consider the ultimate single player experience? I just cannot abide their decision.

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Heisenburg

March 7, 2013 at 10:41 am

The sad truth… forbes.com “Again, only when fan anger and bad press results in an actual decrease in sales, will anything be done to try and walk back abusive policies in order to placate upset players. Until then, they could be declared the worst company across all of time and space, and it won’t make a bit of difference.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/04/05/ea-shrugs-off-worst-company-in-america-title/

Reply
ricadam

March 7, 2013 at 10:47 am

What the real issue for me with this always online DRM is I am forced to use mobile broadband services. And having to be always online chews my data limit and mobile BB is not 100% reliable as well. So this game to me will be un playable until they make it offline somehow.

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marrkdaviid

March 7, 2013 at 11:02 am

I took the plunge and risked purchasing the game last night, despite all of the 1 star rants on Amazon etc. Was extremely surprised when the game completely downloaded and updated in approximately 10 minutes, over my cable internet connection, was expecting it to take hours to download, based on what I had heard.

I played the game for 5 hours last night, from 11PM to 4AM Brisbane time, on Europe East 1. Did not experience a single crash, loving the game! Whilst some people are experiencing a lot of issues with the game, this is not the case for everyone.

Reply
manu

March 7, 2013 at 1:28 pm

If the game is that bad, why don’t people ask for their money back?

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divinemonkey

March 7, 2013 at 1:35 pm

Actually it is out here today (March 7).

Reply
cheuk4

March 7, 2013 at 1:38 pm

I didn’t buy D3 mainly because of always-online DRM, and now Sim City as well. I was sitting on the fence for Strike Suit Zero on Steam until I heard they sold it on GOG, which I then bought immediately. The last game I bought on Steam was Sleeping Dogs, because I didn’t realise it was Steam Activated when I got it retail.

I know it does diddly squat to EA (or whomever’s) bottom line, and the world isn’t going to change in anyway because of it. However, it has to start somewhere and I’ve put my foot down. I really want to try the new Tomb Raider, but I just don’t like Steam anymore.

Note that I don’t fault others for liking Steam, that’s your choice, but since I’ve seen an alternate business model (GOG) that doesn’t require always-online services, call me spoilt but I can’t really go back.

Reply
fathermiso

March 7, 2013 at 8:05 pm

Actually, The pirated version is going to be severally patched by the looks of it… The reason why your game runs to bad fellas..
Found this- Its been leaked

Sim City has the following restrictions (features) that have all been stated by Maxis employees:

You must be connected to the internet 100% of the time you are playing.
…… You must connect to Origin to load or save your city (see next item).
…… Games are saved to the cloud (EA Servers).
…… If you’re net connection goes down for more than a couple of minutes then all gameplay since last save is lost.
…… The installed game is only half the software, the rest is on EA’s Serves so requires a fast, reliable internet connection to transfer data.
…… Other players Cities will influence yours even in ‘single player’ mode.
…… Saved games once loaded must be saved so you can’t change your mind and go back and reload the city.
…… If the game flops and servers are switched off (usually within a year) it will become unplayable.

No god mode terraforming. (This includes how much resources are available and where they are).
No modding allowed at launch (if at all due to online requirements/cloud computing).
No building density zoning.
Buildings may spam along a single road.
Dumbed down micro-management.
Limited population (Max 100,000 Sims per city)
The city tile size is only equivalent to a medium city in SC4, and that is the only size available.
You only get European building sets if you buy the game as a digital download direct from origin.

Reply

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