Darkspore’s woes foretell a grim future for SimCity and ‘cloud’ gaming

Something strange is happening with EA and Maxis’ ill-fated action-RPG, Darkspore. Reports began circulating today that the game has been removed from Steam (at the time of writing, this is still the case.) Right now, it is still available to purchase through EA’s own Origin service.

For months, people who’ve purchased the game have run into technical problems that have prevented them accessing and playing the title. A server issue known as “Error 73003” has dogged the game for extensive periods, while another error (“Error Code 3”) has arisen in the past few weeks. Both are, of course, related to the title’s insistence on a DRM scheme that requires a persistent, “always on” internet connection. There is no method of playing offline, so these errors have meant that Darkspore is effectively unplayable for many people. The precise number is impossible to determine, but it’s enough to sustain regular complaints.

Until recently, there was no official word from either EA or Maxis about possible fixes. The main spokesperson/community manager on Darkspore’s official forums goes by the title “Inquisitor Laine” and has been using the following statement to summarise the state of the game:

“Darkspore is no longer developed. It is for almost all intents & purposes an abandoned title. If you cannot play the game & have flicked through technical issues for any fixes, then contact EA Customer Support; especially if it regards CD-Keys or refunds.

Error 73003 has gone unfixed & remains an issue.

Error Code 3 has arisen for the majority/all & remains an issue.

I will however keep the forums here as clean & tidy as possible in my spare time. Why? Well why not. If it helps anyone with minor problems, or find their way somewhere, then that’s great.

I wish you all luck, no matter what path you choose with Darkspore.”

Laine doesn’t actually work for EA or Maxis. As he himself says “I don’t actually work for anyone, nor do I get paid. This is a voluntary position and in all reality there’s not much reason for me to still do it, but I do.” That both companies were happy to leave an unpaid volunteer in charge of all community relations tells you everything you need to know about their attitude towards actually mending or maintaining the game in any significant fashion.

Thanks to the game’s removal from Steam, this whole affair has been revisited by the gaming press. With variations of “Darkspore is dead” headlines popping up everywhere, someone at either Maxis or EA has started to pay slightly more attention to what’s going on. Laine’s suggestion that the game is “no longer developer” has been removed, and a new statement at the top of the forums, dated 1 July 2013, reads:

“Welcome to the Darkspore forums. Thanks for supporting the game. We recently resolved an issue that was causing some players to not be able to connect to the game. If you any encounter any other issues, please contact help.ea.com for customer support. We will continue to support Darkspore, so feel free to continue to discuss the game here. Thanks – Maxis.”

At this stage it’s difficult to be sure which “issue” this refers to. Error 3 appears to have been the most recent connection problem, so it may be that one. This, however, would still leave Error 73003 unresolved.

It’s also far, far too late. DRM problems have been rife with Darkspore since it launched in April 2011. The current response is purely the result of the game making fresh news headlines and causing further DRM-related embarrassment for EA. Making a token effort to address issues that are months (even years) old with a retroactive forum statement is abysmal customer service.

So that’s the situation with Darkspore. Unplayable for considerable numbers of people since its launch over two years ago. Pulled from Steam. Unlikely to be properly fixed, unless the lone new message of support from Maxis is to be believed.

EA doesn’t have a terrific track record with servers and DRM. The free-to-play ‘battle arena’ game Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes never even made it out of beta before being shut down. It’s not a title that I’ll personally miss, but the manner of its passing was another hatchet job. On 27 February 2013, it was announced that the title would no longer operate after the end of March. That revelation came out of nowhere, and appeared one day after a stream of general “everything is fine” promotional posts.

Of course being in beta hadn’t prevented Wrath of Heroes flogging its users a bunch of real money ‘gem’ currency. Currency which EA decided there would be absolutely no refunds for. Had you just splashed out on a load of gems on 26 February (and why not, everything appeared fine,) you would have had no choice but to spend them all before the end of March and get an entire one month’s enjoyment from your purchases.

More pertinent to the online DRM situation is EA’s latest in-house crisis management exercise to masquerade as a videogame, SimCity.

The game’s launch was so catastrophic, that it’s likely to remain a touchstone of “why always online single player games are terrible” arguments for many years to come. Even after these connection issues were (slowly) fixed, a host of other exciting problems persisted. Granted, that compilation article is from a couple of months back, but Maxis’ latest answer to the way Glassbox (mis)handles traffic appears to be “sell some Airship DLC.”

While the problems with SimCity are no longer as clear-cut as the ones afflicting Darkspore, there is an eerie glimpse of the future in the latter game’s sad slide into broken irrelevance. If Maxis is unable to patch up and mend the remaining bugs, oddities and flawed systems in SimCity, the title may up abandoned by degrees in just the same fashion. With so many issues apparently linked to the underlying Glassbox Engine itself, the prognosis doesn’t appear too hopeful.

This whole article probably reads like an EA hit piece; but although that company in particular seems married to a set of anti-consumer policies, there’s actually a wider warning from all these failures. As soon as anybody (developer or publisher alike) puts data vital to the function of a game on an external server and makes it required for single player, then people are at the mercy of those servers being maintained and updated indefinitely.

Some publishers manage to provide great service, but as the trend for single player games utilising aspects of ‘the cloud’ grows (as it will, if Microsoft’s Xbox One takes off) then so too does the risk of poor support crippling a game. If not poor support, then mere age. Not many publishers will maintain servers for a game three, five or ten years down the line. If those servers are required for even offline play? Then too bad.

At the very least, these types of game need to implement a failsafe option that can strip out the DRM and enable single player offline play. Few other mediums treat the past as so disposable. Films and books are restored and archived with an eye towards history, but videogame titles are intentionally left to die on a semi-regular basis, with little remorse for their passing. It’s dreadful customer service and shows an appalling lack of respect for the medium.

This could be a portent for so many other titles. In Darkspore, SimCity may see grim resonations of its own near future. In SimCity, we all get a long, uncomfortable look at crumbling path online DRM and cloud-mania may be taking us down.

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