Microsoft Creative Director Doesn't Deny Always-On Rumors, Tells us to #dealwithit

Remember when I told you kids about the rumor that the next iteration of the Xbox console would require an always-on connection?  Even after those rumors have spread like wildfire, drawing a collective “WTF guys?” from the gaming community, Microsoft is still unwilling to confirm or deny an always-on requirement to operate their next-gen Xbox, codenamed “Durango.”  In my opinion it is that same refusal that is keeping the rumor alive and drawing gamers’ ire.  It’s really simple fix – all we want is a straight answer.  Yes or no, that’s all it would take.

But instead of real answers from Microsoft to their customer base (that pay hundreds per console and upwards of $50 per title) through a statement or press release, what we got instead was arrogance, ignorance, and insult from Microsoft Studios’ Creative Director Adam Orth (@adam_orth).  Over Twitter.  After going on about how he doesn’t see the big deal about always-on devices and software, he added one choice hashtag to the proceedings:

#dealwithit.

That was his answer.   Classy, man.

After BioWare’s Manveer Heir (@manveerheir) cited the always-on issues that arose with Diablo III and SimCity, Orth quipped that “Electricity goes out too” and sarcastically followed up with “I will not buy a vacuum cleaner” and other assy things of the like.   His twitter feed has since been protected (uh ohhhhh I think the boss may be angryyyy), but of course a number of screencaps were taken around the web to let everyone know how it went down.  For someone who really loves always-on that much, I figured he would have known that stuff you put out on the internet can last forever.  Thanks to HuffPost Tech UK by the way for this lovely capture.

As far as the validity of the always-on rumors, it was Kotaku who finally furnished an answer for us.  Their sources say that the answer is not only “yes,” but that it will only take 3 minutes of being offline to not be able to play anymore.   So why not just tell us that in the first place?

I’m surprised that Orth, someone who’s been in the industry for a while (he’s spent time with SCEA and LucasArts), could make such a shortsighted comment after the very public fiascoes concerning Diablo III last year and SimCity just last month.  The comment shows an alarming amount of industry ignorance for someone in such an important position, and says to me that Microsoft is catering only to users that have stable always-on broadband connections, telling those who don’t to deal with it.  There are a number of areas in the United States that either don’t or have spotty service.  You guys ever use Skype internationally or to someone in the remote USA?  play World of Warcraft or any other MMO?  Then I’m sure you noticed that some players would lose connection and drop wayyyy more frequently than others.  If that’s the case, then your wiped raid is evidence of this fact.  For those users, a 3 minute timer would render this console unplayable.  And that’s just in the United States.  What about American military personnel that game during deployments to remote areas?  In remote areas they’re running on connections reliant on satellites in geosynchronous orbit, where some areas can only be reached by certain satellites, possibly giving a skewed signal on a flatter-than-optimal angle.  So there are definitely potential issues with that setup.

And what about international users?  A lot of those users may find similar problems.

Working in IT I get that Microsoft’s plan forward on their enterprise side is pushing everyone cloud-ward with SkyDrive and their 2013 line of Office.  Given that they’ve been talking for a while about a Microsoft “ecosystem” that would combine Microsoft OS’es with Xbox, their moves including this one don’t seem so shocking.  But aside from that, they need to understand that this business model going forward is not only going to hurt their users, but their own brand.  Sony has made no such assertion that the PlayStation 4 would have an always-on component, so this helps them too, potentially giving them the opportunity to take some ground and have a chuckle at the same time.   But we still don’t have a straight answer.  So it looks like we’re going to have wait until E3 to see any sort of confirmation from Microsoft.  Meaning they have until June to get it together with a unified front and message to users, without rogue employees going berserk on social media.

Let me be clear on my stance on this sort of business practice in case you don’t know already.  I am against always-on.  In my opinion it’s a form of DRM that is sharply anti-consumer, especially now that we have laptops that have the graphics card juice to play modern games.  Always-on means I can’t play Diablo III on a flight, or SimCity on a long train ride.  And dictating when and where we can play our games just isn’t right. We’ve been burned with it more than once.  But the problem is partially us.  Always-on seems to be the way the industry is going, and we tacitly support it by still buying the games knowing the potential issues going in.  At that point, they already have our money, so why should they care?  They’ll move on, and quickly.  And we’ll be left wondering what to do when they finally shut down those connection servers.

EA's Bad Week - the SimCity Saga Thus Far

By now you kids know how I feel about always-on DRM.  It makes me angry.  It makes the fire burn in me belly.  And worst of all, it’s a trend that shows no sign of slowing down in the near future.  I vented and raged about Diablo III when Blizzard released it last year, seeing white hot flashes of rage at the fact that I couldn’t play my single player game offline.  Seemed like a reasonable to me of course, since the game’s predecessor allowed me to do so,  but hey, maybe that’s just me.

As I’m sure we’ve all learned in a number of times in any history class, relationship or other real-life happening, history seems doomed to repeat itself.  This time it wasn’t Blizzard at the heart of the controversy though – instead it was EA, one of the OG’s of always-on DRM, and the release of SimCity, next in that line of addictive little sim games.  Fans were looking forward to it, and would be erecting tiny digital skyscrapers as we speak if it wasn’t for an absolutely catastrophic launch.

You see kids, the city is a sim.  But the horror was real.

For the last few days since launch, a number of users haven’t been able to connect to theSimCity servers.  Of course no connection to the servers means – you guessed it – no SimCity to play.  The few players that are in fact able to connect being dropped mid game with a suddenly severed connection.  The result?  Extremely unhappy gamers.  Check out the official SimCity Facebook page to see the kind or ire they drew from their customers.  You can take another digital trip over to Reddit where the subreddit /r/SimCity has a ton of discussions between unhappy peoples.

That’s the main story, but it serves as a springboard for a couple of other spinoffs in the SimCity saga.  Tuesday on the EA forums (I’d link but it’s since been edited), global community manager Marcel Hatam issued an apology to customers, saying: “If you regrettably feel that we let you down, you can of course request a refund for your order at [Origin's "contact us" page], though we’re currently still in the process of resolving this issue.”

Then I saw this floating around Twitter.  It appears to be a post of a support chat posted to the EA forums by a user going by the handle CalebPeters.  In that chat, we see the customer support representative telling the user that EA does allow users to request refunds, but doesn’t necessarily process them by their return policy, also adding that account bans are in store for users that dispute said policy.  Of course that chat image went Ebola-style viral across the web immediately after.  Marcel Hatan’s forum post has since disappeared, being replaced with the line “Please review our refund policy here: https://help.ea.com/article/returns-and-cancellations” (check poster EA_ComRaven).  This of course links to their return policy, which states that there will be no refunds.  Through their Origin account (@OriginInsider), EA then clarified that users would not in fact be banned for requesting a refund.  PHEW.  Three days of whirlwind nuttiness, all because of always-on DRM.  But wait, what’s that I hear?

**HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!**

Enter Amazon into the heart of the melee.  Eager to spare their customers from what can only be referred to as a kerfuffle, Amazon has stopped selling SimCity on their storefront.  In addition to marking each purchase option as “unavailable” when selected, they give Amazon customers a warning: “Many customers are having issues connecting to the “SimCity” servers. EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed. Please visit https://help.ea.com/en/simcity/simcity for more information.”  Click that screenshot I took to see it full-size or hit up Amazon to see it for yourself.

So EA is trying to address the problem.  Naturally, they hate bad press and the prospect of losing future sales as much as the next company.  Today they announced that they are removing “non-critical” aspects of the game to help lower the stress on their servers, letting more people connect without getting the boot.

Now this is the second launch that I’ve seen destroyed by a publisher’s absolute insistence on always-on DRM (of course i say “destroyed” due to user backlash, not money).  It is also the second launch where the publisher claimed that the always on component provided benefits and was not implemented for DRM reasons.  “Oh it’s technical” they say – well I ain’t buying it.  Diablo III‘s DRM-laden launch was paired with sales. SimCity will still sell a bunch of copies once they get all this sorted out.  That’s two kids.  One more always-on DRM launch and I’m ready to call it a horrifying industry trend.

On an actual technical note, this was the second launch where AAA publishing houses didn’t properly test a stressed server load.  You’re requiring every single player to be online.  Don’t you think your servers and network should be beefed up to match it?