Towns Without Pity: Modder proves EA is LYING about SIMCITY always-online!

So... that whole thing about Electronic Arts' new SimCity requiring a constant Internet connection to play?  EA told us that it was needed because most of the game's processing takes place on EA's own servers.  In other words: the official company line is that it is not possible at all to play SimCity locally on your PC or laptop.  And despite the horde of connection problems that players were made to endure throughout the past week, EA has insisted that they can't remove the always-online obligation and that doing so would require coding up a whole new game.

Lies!  Lies!  All damnable lies!!

Electronic Arts, you got some 'splainin' to do.

The video gaming realm is reeling tonight after word surfaced that a hacker/modder calling himself "UKAzzer" has made SimCity completely playable in the total absence of Internet, for however long you want!

UKAzzer was able to enter the game's demo mode and from there he turned off the disconnection timer.  A few tiny changes of code and the game kept going, and going, and going... and going.  Not only that but he's also discovered that cities can be made much larger than the limits "officially" imposed by the game.

And he's proven it too.  Look!  YouTube clip!



So it looks like the "always-online" component was only slapped-on for digital rights management.  One anonymous developer at Maxis (now owned by EA and the studio that created the first SimCity game nearly 25 years ago) has come out and said as much, adding that it was very easy to make the new SimCity a single-player experience without needing to be online at all.

This situation is really quite unprecedented so far as the video/computer game industry goes. EA practically made it a litany about always-online being needed and how SimCity absolutely, positively could not be made to function without it.  That assertion is now, without any uncertainty, a false one.

I'll wager an RC Cola and a Moon Pie that the next few days at Electronic Arts are going to be a PR nightmare.  But since they've been caught, they should go ahead and do the right thing and rip out the always-online DRM from SimCity.  Doing so would go a LONG way toward re-establishing good relations with its customers and player-base.  Ever since word (and those horrid reviews on Amazon.com) hit the street about how crap-tacular SimCity is because of the DRM, would-be players have been avoiding this game like the plague.  EA needs to come clean and fix this, STAT!

(And if Blizzard is wise, that company will do the same with Diablo III.  If the upcoming PlayStation 3 port of that game won't need always-online, there is no reason whatsoever why the original PC version would require it either.)

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House of Reps restricts Presidential insults

Every time I read a story like this (getting to be all too often these days) the first thing that comes into mind is that line by Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men: "Who ARE these people?!?"

Now it's Louise Slaughter, Chairwoman of the House Rules Committee of the United States House of Representatives. Politico is reporting that Slaughter has implemented some new guidelines for decorum among members of the House, particularly in regard to how representatives discuss the President of the United States (no doubt in response to Joe Wilson's crying aloud of "You lie!" during Obama's health "reform" speech last week).

So in case you're wondering, here is what is allowed...

- refer to the government as "something hated, something oppressive."

- refer to the President as "using legislative or judicial pork."

- refer to a Presidential message as a "disgrace to the country."

- refer to unnamed officials as "our half-baked nitwits handling foreign affairs."

And here is what is not allowed...

- call the President a "liar."

- call the President a "hypocrite."

- describe the President's veto of a bill as "cowardly."

- charge that the President has been "intellectually dishonest."

- refer to the President as "giving aid and comfort to the enemy."

- refer to alleged "sexual misconduct on the President's part."

To be fair, I can agree with some of Slaughter's rulings here, and only because I think sincere discussion of the issues doesn't warrant including words like "cowardly" (or "nitwits" either for that matter). But seriously: don't Slaughter and the rest of Congress have better things to do than play word games with each other and their constituents?

Of course, that's all this really is to these people: a game. One very big amusement that they get to enjoy, at the expense of the money, the liberties and even the very lives of those who sent 'em to D.C. to begin with.

America is at the mercy of a few hundred individuals with no principles, no spine, no vision and no conscience. But they do believe that it's majorly verboten enough to officially outlaw referring to an elected politician as a "hypocrite" or a "liar".

God help us.

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