As I was browsing the tech sites tonight, I came across an article on MaximumPC, and found that Ars Technica had also caught the story. On March 20th, EA blogger Jeff Green posted to Twitter blog Greenspeak of his frustrations with C&C's DRM and his attempts to play single player with his DSL connection.
"Booted twice--and progress lost--on my single-player C&C4 game because my DSL connection blinked. DRM fail. We need new solutions.
Yeah, Steam's ability to have off-line play is the clear, better model when talking about SP games.
However, C&C4 experiments w/what a "single-player game" is--given it's constantly uploading progress/stats for unlocks. It's complicated.
I think if we think of C&C4 as an "online-only" game--which it basically is--then maybe we'd adjust our expectations accordingly.
Welp. I've tried to be open-minded. But my 'net connection is finicky--and the constant disruption of my C&C4 SP game makes this unplayable.
The story is fun, the gameplay is interesting and different at least--but if you suffer from shaky/unreliable DSL--you've been warned."
I figured I'd also include his next couple posts, as they are relevant to the DRM bloat as well.
"LOL-wow. My frustration w/C&C4's online scheme led me to Dawn of War 2. With THIS game, I'm forced to log into GFW Live just to play SP.
F' all this noise. I'm going back to Civ 4. A singleplayer strategy game that--zounds!--I can actually play offline."
While I will join in with Nathan Grayson (MaximumPC) in thanking an EA employee for some honesty and not hiding the problems from the public, isn't it sad when EA's own employees realize that the DRM scheme doesn't work?
I know several people have tried to say that EA's "solution" is not DRM, it's just a way of experience for single and multiplayer to build up together. I'm sorry, but it is DRM. It requires a constant connection, rather than just updating at the completion of a mission or saving the experience locally on the PC (even if it is saved locally for later update when you connect to a multiplayer game). If it tells a person when or how they can play the game, it is DRM.
So, thank you Jeff Green for your honesty! Hopefully EA doesn't come down on you for it. And please, EA, Ubisoft, and any other publisher thinking of requiring persistent internet connections for SINGLE player games, stop it!
2 comments:
Sorry if anybody gets multiple emails about this post...editing issues. Thanks for reading!
A-freaking-men... I'm tired of all these big publishers trying to sugar-coat these piece of crap DRM schemes and sell them as if they have some value to anyone.
The benefits they praise themselves for are all benefits that can be accomplished sans-DRM and have existed in games past to one extent or another (with less restrictive DRM.)
It's time for the rubbish to go away... let us buy the game, then leave us alone.
@FNG_Tsam314: No worries... the email only goes out on the initial create. We have to return to the blog to see the edited version(s).
... Isn't it time to update your sig to say DirtyDan now? ;)
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