EA Threatens Bans For Unreported SimCity Bugs

[Ihoe]

As the Ars Technica story itself now includes, EA did a facepalm and fixed this! :rolleyes:

 

UPDATE (1/22/13): EA has updated the EULA language and issued the following statement: "“The clause in the EA Beta Agreement for the SimCity beta was intended to prohibit players from using known exploits to their advantage. However, the language as included is too broad. EA has never taken away access to a player’s games for failing to report a bug. We are now updating the Beta Agreement to remove this point.”"

 

EA PR scrambling to try and clear the crap EA legal department shoved together.

What a great bunch, I would trust these morons with my life. exactly how the offending passage is being changed? EULAs have grown so complicated and unwieldy that even the companies that write them can’t be arsed to look them over.

[brokenergy]

EA PR scrambling to try and clear the crap EA legal department shoved together.

What a great bunch, I would trust these morons with my life. exactly how the offending passage is being changed? EULAs have grown so complicated and unwieldy that even the companies that write them can’t be arsed to look them over.

 

If Valve or any other "PC Darling" did it you wouldn't care but when EA does something like this you go nuts? Can anyone understand why I feel so fustrated with today's fanbase? I understand why they are doing this, Sim City is basically an online game, like Diablo 3. It was designed that way from the ground up. People will use bugs and gliches to their advantage and EA is just making sure that cheaters never prosper. Do I like it? No, I would have liked it if it was off-line with an on-line function. Do I understand their reasoning? Yes, because it sucks when people cheat. Will there ever be a off-line mode? If Glassbox engine was improved that way to accomidate that, which it isn't.

[ziitch]

This reminds me of a Madden dev who tweeted about how frustrated he was with his job because of how metrics and not development experience dictated on what was to be done with the game. I mean, seriously, metrics are nice, but they are nothing but a very, very short-sighted expectation on what could sell. Interests change, and they change quickly - It's better to dictate that change instead of being a follower of what is "in" at the time being. Sometimes, you don't need to try to direct people into a new direction, and instead you just have to remind people (and devs) of game modes once thought archaic can actually feel like a fresh reminder when placed with all the followers of current game styles. Sim City 5 would've easily made a massive sell if they tried this same route with a few modernizations (that could be turned off), but instead their modernizations change the core and formula into something that feels too alien the veterans and too desperate to grab the attention (and wallets) of the casuals. If it isn't too late, perhaps taking a page from the success that was XCOM (Firaxis once shared the Sim series with Maxis, actually) and redesigning the game to reintegrate the classic core and formula of the previous Sim Cities would in fact be better route to take. That's the kind of game people are eagerly expecting - Not a game built around social aspects and overall forced team play.

Would it mean a longer dev time? Of course. Are we patient enough to wait? Well, we've been waiting for EA to right its wrongs for almost a decade now! :biggrin:

 

(If I was an eye doctor, I'd prescribe the industry binoculars just to correct their vision. That's just how short-sighted these companies and the suits running them are...)

Edited January 24, 2013 by ziitch

[Vagrant0]

If Valve

Last I checked... Even in the worst possible situation and obvious abuse, using cheats in an online game with VAC, the only thing you lose is that game's ability to connect to any official servers... And that serves you right for cheating.

 

And those instances are relatively few and far between.

 

 

About the only case where Valve has locked anyone's account was because of games bought through illegal means... Although there were one or two cases where people's accounts were locked for games gifted to them (that ended up being bought with a stolen credit card). Almost all of those "false positive" instances only occurred within the first few years of Steam running. With the number of games being passed around for TF2 hats, you would hear about this sort of thing much more often if it was still happening.

 

Not to say that Valve is necessarily better in all regards... But we're comparing two different companies with completely different business models and histories. Valve doesn't have the same history of blatant disregard for their customers as EA has shown in the last decade.

 

 

Regarding Simcity... The game became virtually unplayable after Simcity Unlimited, by and large because you pretty much had to develop every region on the map individually in order to get any one part reasonably well working, and was made even worse with the number of neighboring regions and relatively small city size of Sim City 4. They havn't known what they were doing for almost 10 years now.

 

Hah... coincidence.

[Ihoe]

EA PR scrambling to try and clear the crap EA legal department shoved together.

What a great bunch, I would trust these morons with my life. exactly how the offending passage is being changed? EULAs have grown so complicated and unwieldy that even the companies that write them can’t be arsed to look them over.

 

If Valve or any other "PC Darling" did it you wouldn't care but when EA does something like this you go nuts? Can anyone understand why I feel so fustrated with today's fanbase? I understand why they are doing this, Sim City is basically an online game, like Diablo 3. It was designed that way from the ground up. People will use bugs and gliches to their advantage and EA is just making sure that cheaters never prosper. Do I like it? No, I would have liked it if it was off-line with an on-line function. Do I understand their reasoning? Yes, because it sucks when people cheat. Will there ever be a off-line mode? If Glassbox engine was improved that way to accomidate that, which it isn't.

 

Again with this Valve vs EA BS same with everywhere else on the internet.

that's harsh and uncalled for. Online or not, when the people in legal don't Understand the difference between Bug and Exploit these situations occur. I think the problem is that we as consumers are very used to these little clauses “that are only to be used in special circumstances”, being used for utterly stupid things 6 months down the line to our detriment. So we stand up when we see them to beat them down before they become a problem.

 

If EA actually gave a s*** they would have the clause written properly the first time, lawyers do not make mistakes such as this in contracts, it is there because EA wanted it and they wanted it that broad, this is not them fixing there contract, this is them backing down.

 

But hey we are only consumers, i guess we don’t need to stand together against BS that we find because all companies are happy huggy beings that would never do anything that is anti consumer or something that is to the detriment of our preferred method of entertainment.

 

EA was voted the worst company in America in The Consumerist poll by the consumers. So maybe, just maybe, the opposition against it has something to do with consumer relations and not fanboyism? A poorly-worded EULA is still potentially harmful to us, and EA cares only about stuff that is potentially harmful to them. So the outrage was definitely helpful in getting this thing amended. Plus, they have a legal department. Why weren’t they used in the first place?

 

and on the Valve vs EA subtopic:

Valve has PC gamers EARNED respect. EA has, through many past actions, shown themselves to be untrustworthy. Valve has not.Valve, being privately held, is immune to the shareholder activism that prompts companies as big as EA to become idiotic in their treatment of paying customers. Valve never threatened to ban your entire Steam account because of lack of reporting bugs (not Exploits). Origin is trash and remains trash, Steam is a quality service with reasonable sales all the time. EA will never approach Valve’s success in the DD market, and primarily because of blow back from all their previous anti-consumer moves. In short, EA had made their bed and can lay in it, while Valve has impressed us generally and until they do something flagrantly wrong, they will continue to be well-regarded by gamers.

Edited January 24, 2013 by Ihoe