SimCity owners get free game, EA will get A NEW CEO
Maxis/EA 'we're sorry' giveaway includes SimCity 4
Updated Maxis has published the list of the games it's offering free miffed 'Mayors' to compensate for SimCity's disastrous launch.
The offer was announced by Maxis on Sunday and lets existing customers and those who register before March 25 to get a free game along with their copy of SimCity as compensation. The downloads start on March 22 and registered owners have until the end of the month to grab their games.
"Our SimCity Mayors are incredibly important to the team at Maxis. We sincerely apologize for the difficulties at launch and hope to make it up to you with a free PC game download from Origin," the company wrote ina blog post on Sunday.
Disgruntled SimCity owners can go back to the future by choosing a free copy of SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition - a game that many fans of the series have turned to in the wake of the online troubles the new version has experienced, due to its offline functionality, mature traffic model, large city sizes and verdant ecosystem of mods and add-ons.
Besides SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, customers can also choose the standard editions of Battlefield 3, Bewjeweled 3, Dead Space 3, Mass Effect 3, Medal of Honor Warfighter, Need for Speed Most Wanted, and Plants vs. Zombies.
Maxis decided to give a free game away to customers after its hotly-anticipated online-only town simulator crashed-and-burned upon launch due to widespread server problems. Though these problems have since (mostly) subsided, the game has been dogged with further issues, such as shoddy traffic simulation algorithms and server-side saving errors.
Mischievous buyers that want to send a cold, hard, cash-based signal to EA execs, may note that the retail prices for all these games vary by a significant margin, between the cheap Plants vs. Zombies and more expensive titles like Battlefield 3. After the offer expires it is likely that an EA/Maxis bean-counter will run the numbers on the games people chose and come up with a number representing either lost or missed revenue.
Offline hacks
While EA/Maxis is busy offering SimCity buyers a legit way to build their towns offline (SimCity 4) the fan community is working to cut the links mooring SimCity to servers operated by EA/Maxis.
Several guides have appeared online that can help people work out how to run the game offline with varying levels of functionality, either by modifying local files manually, or by downloading dedicated patches.
One hack posted on major gaming forum NeoGAF, requires the user to comment out a mere line of code.
This appears to contradict EA/Maxis' earlier claims that allowing the game to be played offline would require "a significant amount of engineering work by our team".
Updated to add
EA CEO John Riccitiello will step down on 30 March, the company announced on Monday.
"We appreciate John's leadership and the many important strategic initiatives he has driven for the Company. We have mutually agreed that this is the right time for a leadership transition," EA's newly-appointed executive chairman Larry Probsts said in a canned statement.
No reason was given for Riccitiello's sudden departure. ®
Bootnote
Terming owners of the game 'Mayors' is a depressingly (and we suspect unintentional) accurate reflection of the state SimCity buyers find themselves in: though they are in charge of their city, this is temporary and eventually they will have to leave office, probably not at their own wishes but due to external factors.
A full list of the games whose online functions are no longer supported by EA, is available here.
COMMENTS
"The downloads start on March 22 and registered owners have until the end of the month to grab their games."
In other news, EA's download servers will be offline for scheduled maintenance for the last week in March.
Rip-off merchants
We bought my son the "full" version of NFS Most Wanted for his PS3 .... now it turns out that he needs additional packs at £12 a go to complete the game.
If this is the way gaming is going then it's just greed.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but you bought the game disc and it was all on there to the end.
Thieving gits!
Ten quid says John Riccitiello blames his departure on software piracy.
Re: My suspicion...
The day I gave up Steam for Origin is the day I'll sign my own commitment papers.
I upvoted you
Because I think that voting with our dollars is the best way to decide what we will and will not take. if being online 24/7 doesn't bother you and this game, despite the issues, makes you happy? Then I'm happy for you, I really and truly am.
That said I will NEVER buy a game that demands i be online merely to "prove" I am not a criminal, I gave you my money and expect to be treated as your customer NOT as a potential shoplifter. If you went to a shop and a security guy followed you down every aisle, even though you had done nothing and shopped with them for years, would you go back? So why put up with the same treatment from a game company?
I buy games from Steam because I can play for a month without Internet and the worse it'll do is tell me that achievements in some game won't count or that it needs to sync my saves next time I hook up, big deal and the services they give me in return for using Steam DRM (great chat and matchmaking, great service even over the holidays, cheaper prices) makes it worth it to me.
I won't buy Origin games as I have already heard from friends how quickly EA will use the banhammer (costing you your games at the same time BTW) if you dare complain, I won't buy always online like the AC series and Splinter Cell series (although I heard Ubisoft has removed all the always online stuff so if true I may pick them up) and when it came out that D3 was online only not only did I buy several copies of Torchlight II to give away to family and friends (if you haven't tried TL2 its a great game, you can do LAN or online MP and SP is offline) but I wrote a nice letter telling Blizzard WHY I wouldn't buy D3 after buying a good dozen copies of D1 and D2 (again so my friends and family could enjoy it too) so they could see how their boneheaded move cost them another loyal customer.
Vote with your wallet folks and stick to your guns, at the worst you'll have a better gaming exp and be rewarding those that treat you well, and at best as we saw with Ubisoft getting rid of always online you CAN make a company change direction.
