SimCity

[Skyblade]

I'm not a massive proponent of piracy in the gaming industry by any means, but if it's the only way to make a game work then perhaps the developers should think very, very long and hard on such matters. I'm hearing that there are all kinds of other problems (eg. size of areas available to build on) so I'll probably just not get it at all.

When it comes to game releases this horrendous, or even simply cases where pirating nets you a superior product to the purchased version, I think companies deserve to have their stuff pirated. People downloading an illegal version of the game shouldn't get a better user experience than paying customers, ever. Which is why I generally don't like DRM. More often than not it punishes paying customers with a troutty experience so that it can fail to prevent piracy. And given the track record so far, always online methods of the sort used by Simcity do even more to ruin the user experience all so they can be next to impossible to pirate.

But I'd love to get an honest answer from EA about whether they feel having a disaster of a launch which has seen such wonderful things as disabling features in desperate attempts to get it to run, as well as pulling their advertising of the game and Amazon refusing to sell it for the time being were worth giving the finger to the pirates. Because I really can't see them saying it was worth it if they were going to be honest with themselves.

So, if I write a book, and someone comes and re-edits it, or adds a chapter, and then gives it away to tons of people, I deserve to have my stuff pilfered because "my" version is inferior?

It's still their intellectual property. Yes, others can improve upon it. Heck, that's why modding communities exist for PC games and have done since the dawn of the internet. That doesn't change the fact that they didn't make the game, and it's not their property.

Justify it however you want, it's just an excuse to steal from the companies. If you decide to play their game, they should get paid for it. There is nothing forcing you to play it. There are tons of other games out there, heck, even free ones. If you decide to use their property, you should pay them for it. Buy the game and then crack or pirate it, and I won't care. But to play it without paying the company is theft, and I won't support it. If you want to punish the company, don't buy it and don't pirate it. Just realize that they made a crappy, extremely sub-par product, but it is still their product, and find something else to play.