http://www.computerandvideogames.com/39 ... do-better/

Good response, but it won't change anything until they start focusing like, 'We need to make money, but let's not be so obviously cynical'.

That is an incredible acheivement. Bank of America and AT&T really set the bar incredibly high and EA beat them!!!!!


Then what is it? If it looks like a duck talks like a duck and walks like a duck it is a duck.

They could start by stopping buying independent game studios - such as Westwood - and then ruining an otherwise brilliant series of games.

In a couple of years, they will decide that the servers will be switched off, rendering the game unplayable. It sounds totally idiotic.

I have an Origin account, but only because it's required by Crysis 2 & 3. It's been better of late but the number of problems I've had with it, for the sake of two games, is incredible.

In my experience, Steam works. Always.

It might work, but what if Steam went bust? The problem for online games is that you could end up with games that are unplayable because of the requirement to depend on online servers.

Nearly always. I've made the mistake of running a stream game on an oil rig while connected to a pre dial up speed internet connection. It started to update in the background but kept dropping out. But it wouldn't let my try again in offline mode until the update had completed. I couldn't play games until I went home. Now I have to be very careful to turn my wi-Fi off before starting a steam game at work.

Perhaps I imagined it, but I thought Valve said they could release a patch that would effectively free a game from Steam in the event they would cease to support it?

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Starcraft has moved to an always on connection as well. It was not so bad in the past. It gave you the option of playing as a guest, but that no longer applies. The problem is that as a solo player, who never ventures into online battles it means I have upgrades foisted upon me. Fortunately Blizzard have a huge number of players for their main games so it might all be irrelevant, but there really need to be statutory rules that will apply a patch to make the games independent of the internet if the company collapses.

That could be interesting to enforce.

Company goes bust so you phone them up for a patch... except no one answers the phone.

I suppose they could all release the patch along with the game and say "but please don't use it!"

Not really. They could produce the patch at the same time as making the game which ends the problems of no patch being available at the time of collpase. It could be stored in a company safe, then if the company collapses all it would take is putting it up on Piratebay or many sites like Macupdate.com (for mac users). It only needs to be released by the receiver or company administrator after being called in. That solves the problem of it being out there and requiring people to not use it.