Sim City 5 leaked footage

[BigBiker05]

This guy breaks down the way citizens work and why it's breaking the server and there are massive traffic jams:

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellaneous- ... 60#U737060[

[Greebo]

FWIW, one of the devs says they're working on it:

https://twitter.com/MaxisGuillaume/stat ... 2801284099

[Boss Llama]

This didn't take long:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21802508

Summary: A guy entered debug mode and tweaked a single value, thus making the game work without an internet connection. The only thing it couldn't do was save the city, because that's set to go to the cloud (though he thinks that could be done as well with a bit of work), thus demonstrating what all of us knew already - your computer doesn't need "help" from the servers to run the simulation - they exist solely as a DRM control mechanism, and to facilitate multiplayer regions.

[MasterChef]

I had my doubts about it actually being needed as well. Last week there was a few times where I would lose connection to EA while playing and the game kept on going just fine.

[Greebo]

Hey Master what server are you these days?

[MasterChef]

I haven't played much since last week. It had been a bit annoying playing with cheetah speed turned off so I took a break from it.

[Will T.]

I'm glad I didn't buy this game, and I have no intention of doing so based on events so far. The saga it has started is entertaining to follow though.

This headline caught my eye in the Steam news feed today:

http://kotaku.com/5990997/coders-discov ... in-simcity

So apparently there is a condition under which the game self-terminates after 20 minutes without an internet connection ... but 100% offline play is not only possible, but easy with only a small amount of code needing to be commented out.

I find it hilariously ironic that in less than 2 weeks since release, not only have the "anti-piracy" measures in this game proven to severely hinder the game's playability by legitimate buyers, but thanks to hacking, pirates are more easily able to play it than the paying customers themselves. If EA is really out to secure mo' money, I don't think alienating your paying customers is the way to do that. But what do I know about big business?

[MateoTheBold!]

I'm glad I didn't buy this game, and I have no intention of doing so based on events so far. The saga it has started is entertaining to follow though.

This headline caught my eye in the Steam news feed today:

http://kotaku.com/5990997/coders-discov ... in-simcity

So apparently there is a condition under which the game self-terminates after 20 minutes without an internet connection ... but 100% offline play is not only possible, but easy with only a small amount of code needing to be commented out.

I find it hilariously ironic that in less than 2 weeks since release, not only have the "anti-piracy" measures in this game proven to severely hinder the game's playability by legitimate buyers, but thanks to hacking, pirates are more easily able to play it than the paying customers themselves. If EA is really out to secure mo' money, I don't think alienating your paying customers is the way to do that. But what do I know about big business?

Agreed. I really wanted to like/purchase the game but after my experiences with D3 I won't ever buy another online only game that requires an always on internet connection for single player.

Hopefully they do patch the problems with the sims searching for next available job/house and include an offline option.

[Guardian]

I'm enjoying this train-wreck as it goes forward.

[Buzzy Beetle]

[Will T.]

The CEO of EA has stepped down. Related?

[Boss Llama]

The CEO of EA has stepped down. Related?

[ShiftyDevil]

This didn't take long:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21802508

Summary: A guy entered debug mode and tweaked a single value, thus making the game work without an internet connection. The only thing it couldn't do was save the city, because that's set to go to the cloud (though he thinks that could be done as well with a bit of work), thus demonstrating what all of us knew already - your computer doesn't need "help" from the servers to run the simulation - they exist solely as a DRM control mechanism, and to facilitate multiplayer regions.

I find this humorous.

Any programmer here could tell you that it is more efficient, when you are running millions of individual simulations, to farm it out to many many clients than trying to do it on a giant system with lots and lots and lots of cores.

It makes no sense from a pure infrastructure perspective that EA's servers wouldn't be doing a bunch of heavy lifting when you can just have the client do it.

Remember EA said it's a simulation down to the individual agent.