SimCity Hack Does NOT Let Users Destroy Anyone’s Online City Thanks To Always-On DRM

There is a story going around the gaming journalism news reblogging world right now about the ability to “hack” SimCity and destroy other players’ cities. The articles are spinning it as a major issue, something which it would seem to be if you spent zero time at all actually investigating. Let me do the journalism that you click-baiting morons were too slow to actually do.

If you watch the video, which I won’t link here, you’ll know that syncing to the servers is turned off. The game is not being played online during this video, so any changes that he does are irrelevant to everyone else. You cannot go into someone else’s city and destroy it because it won’t sync and save. The only thing you’re editing or destroying is some city that you’ve loaded into memory. I can do more real-world damage by swatting a fly.

How do I know it doesn’t sync over to the servers? I know this because the person who actually came out with these client mods posted it himself:

“I did not try to “spoof” the owner ID’s when doing this , so while I *CAN* “Take over” any city I like and run the simulation as if it was my own, place buildings, change taxes, play for hours, or destroy it – It *WON’T* be synced to the server at all, so no permanent changes are ever made to another player’s cities. It’s good fun though, and you can make entertaining videos with it. Spoofing owner ID’s may be a dangerous possibility to save the edits to server – but EA servers may have checks to prevent this already.”

There are fair points being made from every perspective  about the always-online aspect of SimCity. However, a lot of the arguments have come down to ridiculous anti-EA moaning and it has started spilling over into half-assed propaganda campaigns. EA surely had some say in whether or not SimCity had these features, but it was Maxis who had the ultimate power over the game. It was Maxis who had every right and ability to make it offline-capable, but they didn’t. Don’t just blame EA just because you dislike EA for whatever reason. I guarantee that if this were an indie developer, far fewer people would be pissed off about the same game and the same situation.

To clarify where my profiteering media friends do not, I DO have an EA-bestowed title, and I do technically do work for several of their studios. I am however a volunteer and owe nothing to Electronic Arts – if anything, they still owe me for some of the hard and unending work I’ve put in over the years. My ideals and opinions are not swayed by EA or any subsidiary of theirs, and I promise you they wouldn’t even like half of my ideals and opinions.  I am not a fan of always-on DRM, but I am a fan of rational thought.

Review: Champions of Regnum

I first noticed Champions of Regnum a few years ago. I had noticed that a 3-sided RvR game had been made which, I think, blatantly copies a mixture of DAoC and WAR. I noticed they also used the then-copyrighted (is it still? Can’t find the info) “RvR” terminology and wondered why the hell they hadn’t been sued yet. Maybe they were just never a threat. Now that it’s on the front page of Steam and the Steam forums are filled with ecstatic, euphoric reviews I thought I’d give it a try.

The download size is decently small, so it didn’t take long. The launcher is just not good. Aside from the launcher displaying no news (it literally says “no_news”), even the tooltips when mousing over things was in the wrong place. Maybe it only matters to me when a launcher is sloppy, but it does.

After finding out that the clearly-labeled Beta 64-bit client doesn’t work at all, I finally got into the game using the 32-bit client. I’m immediately hit with a choice between 3 Realms. Like F2P, 3-sided PvP is not necessarily a guaranteed good idea so I don’t really care about this enough to give them good marks for it. After picking one, I was confronted with a choice of poor character models to choose from. It’s not that they were bad, it’s that they’re REALLY amateur. It doesn’t FEEL like an art style, rather it feels that it’s the best someone could do. So I picked some Asura-looking thing, fiddled with the handful of bland character choices and logged in as a mage.

After restarting the client in order to turn the graphics settings all the way up, I was ready to play. I guess.

The first thing I notice is that the graphics don’t seem terrible, so that’s good. I can’t say the same about the UI. Pressing Tab for example hides the entire UI. Who the shit put this together and thought it was a reasonable product? It’s clunky, it’s somewhat ugly, and it’s miserably outdated. The absolute worst part about the bad UI is that it’s one of the easiest things you can possibly change in a game and there’s no good excuse for poor execution. After my first really tough battle with the questing UI, I was set off to click some crates and run out of mana in 3 casts on some little goblin guys that I 1-shot. Completing that, I was sent to some other guy, who sent me to some other guy, who made me kill some wolves and then sent me to a final guy that dropped me off the questing chain entirely to figure it out for myself.

Along the way to being absolutely patronized by the quests and music, I couldn’t help but bitch about the graphics. The terrain resolution must be set to “potato” in whatever engine they’re using, and whoever is in charge of design must be some sort of sea monster, because I can’t think of anything that could do a reasonably worse job at it. I’m not just whining here, you can seriously count the polygons in the ground and buildings while moving. It all made my character fit into the environment even less, cheapening my experience a great deal.

 

I’ll be totally honest, that’s as far as I got. I didn’t try the PvP, I didn’t try the RvR. I couldn’t bring myself to wade through this mess and get that far. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, as the game should be able to actually get me there before it disgusts me thoroughly. My final opinion is that Champions of Regnum is without reasonable design when it comes to art, GUI, basic game design, or even the sound. I can’t help but to believe that the euphoric reviews of the game on the Steam Community forum are actually from the development studio, because I can’t think of anyone who would legitimately enjoy this experience.

Fix: Dungeon Defenders Trying to Install AMD CPU Driver

So, you just got Dungeon Defenders as part of the latest Humble Indie Bundle or Steam sale and you’re attempting to install it on an Intel PC. Stop right there, pal. That’s as far as you’re going to get, since you absolutely don’t want to install AMD CPU drivers. Here’s the solution!

 

In Regedit (Start/Run -> regedit.exe) navigate to:

32bit: 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\TrendyEntertainment\DungeonDefenders

64bit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\TrendyEntertainment\DungeonDefenders

 

Add a new DWORD32 value called “InstalledUE3Redist” and set its value to “1″.

 

If you’re not comfortable editing the Windows registry for yourself, here’s the .reg file:

DungeonDefendersIntel32bit.reg

DungeonDefendersIntel64bit.reg

 

 

Your game is now ready to play!

PS4 Event Had Zero Women

Not a single fuck should be given. Nobody would complain if the presenters were 100% female and men were not represented. I haven’t seen anyone complaining that several races went unrepresented. It’s simply not an issue, and it’s disgusting that our society has gotten to this point. This isn’t a presentation by the UN, this is a presentation given by Sony, and I guarantee nobody made a conscious decision to not include women.

The biggest problem with the international reporting on this non-issue is the ridiculous levels of hypocrisy. The Verge reported on this, yet The Verge is only 7% female with exactly 0% of their 18 leadership positions being filled by women. This is how much of the news media industry is today. I won’t call it an industry of journalism because it’s plagued by shit like this.

If equality is to be achieved, we must actually treat the sexes as equal. Don’t bitch about under-representation of women at a gaming presentation as if women are somehow more important than men. Don’t shoot down their accomplishments because they fail to contain ovaries. If the sexes are truly equal then it doesn’t fucking matter which ones were on that stage.

I openly challenge anyone to respond without making a single sexist comment or assuming which gender I am, which is not public information.

Responding to Reddit’s Ridiculous Libertarian-Anarchist AMA

I’d have to say that Reddit is currently one of the best things about the internet. Reddit is a center of discussion for many communities which otherwise had none, and that’s great. Unfortunately, this free and open discussion which anyone can join is naturally littered with issues. This is no different than anywhere else on the internet, ridiculous bullshit is everywhere and largely not moderated. It’s part of what makes the internet great, actually.

I was browsing Reddit as usual and came across this AMA: I am Stephan Kinsella, a patent attorney and Austrian economics and anarchist libertarian writer who thinks patent and copyright should be abolished. AMA

Reading through the OP’s replies to questions, I was completely astonished that the majority had not called this man out for his bullshit. Now, I’m all for your freedom to have any beliefs you want. I may not respect your beliefs, but I’m ecstatic that you can freely have them. I really like how Reddit can pick what’s great and democratically vote things up to the top so that the majority is more exposed to certain things that people like. Unfortunately, it has a chance of making absolute ridiculousness seem legitimate.

As an educated person, I feel the absolute need to respond to some of the things Mr. Stephan Kinsella said.

 

First of all, allow me to momentarily address the title of his post. He claims to be an anarchist and libertarian writer who is against patents and copyrights. This makes it especially hard to understand why this AMA was relevant at all. Of course you want patents and copyrights to be abolished, you’re an ANARCHIST. You want the entire government to be abolished, it’s right there in the core of your publicly expressed beliefs. Even on the libertarian side, this sort of thing is obvious. Libertarians would have the governing body shrunk to the point of open and unrestricted oppression by profit-seeking private entities, and this demands the removal of restrictions like patents and copyrights.

The rest of the AMA drags on an on with the OP answering basically every question with typical anarchist/libertarian buzz words. It sounds like a poorly written punk album from 1994. We get it, OP, you want the state gone. You want patents removed because they protect one entity from the exploitation of another entity. Yeah, western patent processes are kinda screwed up right now, but that doesn’t apply to the entire world and it can be reformed without absolute anarchy. It’s almost as if, in anarchy, you couldn’t protect your inventions by just murdering competition.

A major point is missed here. The quote “state agencies are incompetent, inept, and enforcing arbitrary, vague unjust laws”, yet the OP is currently under a “statist” system that is fully allowing him to express his views and is open and willing to accept copyright/patent reforms. The current system is largely democratic and the OP is in a serious power position as part of that system (read: patent attorney). This isn’t good enough, apparently, and we must tear down the entire thing so that the elite can have their way without litigation and restriction. This isn’t a legitimate political stance, this is a power grab for those who would gladly give us absolute dystopia on the grounds of serving the elite their platters of wealth.

 

I’m saddened that the OP has posed as a serious and legitimate spokesperson of anarchy and fascist libertarianism and that Reddit has deemed this worthwhile. While it’s great that we all have different views, that doesn’t make everyone a reasonable and intelligent source of political opinion. While we all deserve a voice, not everyone’s voice deserves to be broadcast to the masses or knocked up to the front page alongside constructive discourse.

Windows 8 Part 2: Fozee Can Talk A Lot About Task Manager

As I said last time, after insulting your intelligence, I’m now going to cover some updated UI elements that I believe make Windows 8 great. First on the list is Task Manager. It’s a boring subject for most, but everyone is going to be diving into the Task Manager at some point whether you like it or not. Pictured directly below is the basic Task Manager as most users are going to see it. Remember how you were saying this is going to be too complex for the average person? I don’t think so. Let’s press More details since we’re adults. 

Windows 8 (or: Fozee Shows Why Your Bashing Is Ignorance)

Alright, god dammit people. Around the internets I see plenty of people treating Windows 8 like they treated Windows Vista. If you actually used Vista you’d know that their complaints were overblown ignorance. It’s no different here, let me show you!

Look at this desktop. Looks like a cleaner Windows 7 to me. I have my desktop icons turned off for the sake of not having to delete icons to protect sensitive information. Ignore the lack of icons. If you’ll shut the hell up, we’ll continue. Good.

See that red mouse cursor I created? Cool. Let’s move that mouse into the bottom left corner, where we’d expect to find our start menu.

 

 

WHOA there’s that start menu button, in case you couldn’t hit the Windows key like an adult. What happens when you move the mouse upwards from here? Let me show you, stop asking questions before I get to that point, what is wrong with you? Moving on.

 

Whoa, a task switcher?! This makes it so that I can switch between the desktop and the Start apps. It’s a feature leftover from tablets, but it does take several clicks out of your operations. That was directed at you, people complaining about extra operations do to anything. You know who you are.

Let’s do the same thing on the right side of the screen and see wha-

 

WHOA did you see that? Look at that screenshot again. Now look back here and tell me how difficult that was. Easy, right? Here’s another start button, and multiple buttons that are intended to unify settings menus across the entire OS. That sounds pretty goddamn simplistic to me. Press that Settings button and see what happens, I’m on the edge of my goddamn seat.

 

Well damn, look at that. All the settings I could possibly want to quickly reach are all right there, one click away from within every part of the OS. Let’s summarize.

 

Windows 8 is not only simple to use, to me it’s a pleasure. Thanks to those incredibly simple operations detailed above, you now know how to operate the entire OS. It took you less time than you take to read your celebrity gossip magazine, and you actually are now a somewhat useful human being for gaining knowledge. All of this talk about more clicks to get things done are bullshit. It’s that simple. Bullshit. For many operations, it’s actually fewer clicks and a much more user-friendly UI. Yeah, you’re going to need to spend 3 minutes teaching grandma to use it, but look how many hours it took that woman to figure out the mouse.

I’m not being paid by Microsoft to say any of this, and I’m still paying full price for the OS when it releases in 9 days. I’m simply a fan of it, and I think you’re being unreasonable for not being one.

Soon we’ll take a look at some massively improved desktop elements.

 

Thanks EA. Mostly.

According to EA, I said this:

1.st learn English DICE ! And 2.nd bring a new REAL game – experience ! Armored Kill show you don’t really bring this Bf3 to a new STATUS! Close was SHIT , NOW Armored is SHIT aqgane !!!! What up DICE ? Take your forefinger out of your ASS ! And bring GOOD DLC’s. I will tell or my friend’s NOT 2 buy y

 

Yeah, that sounds exactly like something I’d say. I was puzzled when this email arrived, warning me for using bad language. It was probably also a warning for typing like a goddamned idiot, because that is terrible. Anyways, I was somewhat upset. I’ve been happily volunteering for EA for nearly 3 years now, building many connections and opportunities for me and saving them a boatload of money. Mutual respect, probably.

This post was going to be all pissy and angry, but it turns out EA support is actually quite good, probably only when you’re important, and resolved the situation in a half hour. No bad marks on my account, just as I keep it.

 

Oh, and the quoted text? Posted on my Battlelog feed… by someone else. If you’re unaware, it’s like someone posting on your wall on Facebook.

New GW2 Trailer Is No Mystery

GW2′s launch trailer was released. Go watch it, it’s pretty good. You’ll notice, however, that there are many people calling it bad, and that the live-action part made no sense. Since you’re a bunch of bookahs, let me spell it out for you.

ArenaNet operates on a set of very basic Leftist values. It’s open, it’s friendly, and most importantly it focuses on community. They clearly have a great environment for their employees and it allows them to output not only more content, but more imaginative content. It’s not some big secret that this is how the company is being operated. They’ve created an “MMO revolution” in which the community is the primary focus, and selfish greed is eliminated. Everyone can play every month regardless of whether or not they can spend any money on it that month. It’s hard to properly stress how important the community is, and how openly it’s being supported.

It’s not some big secret that the trailer is playing on the looming civil unrest in the entire world right now. Shit’s about to go down, and it’s no secret that revolution could be easily triggered by a single bad decision by one of our governments. We as a people don’t find selfishness and intolerance to be acceptable anymore. This is the theme of the video, and it’s very clearly using it all to send a message. Guild Wars 2 is the right thing at the right time, and we all want it to succeed.

Was the voice-over also a message to our youth to stand up for their beliefs and make the changes for the best? Maybe. It wouldn’t be a stretch at all. The only more Left-oriented game studio I can think of is Valve, and they happen to share a lot of the same values and behaviors. So, no, this isn’t some secret message. It’s obvious. If it wasn’t obvious to you, there’s nothing stopping you from picking up a book and educating yourself for the better.

If you read all of that and thought “Ewww Leftist politics are gross and bad for me, I like my guns and my freedom! Go fascist values!” Then I don’t respect your views. If you don’t like that, don’t read my blog.

GW2: The Adventures of Scumbags: Exploitation Edition

Guild Wars 2 has a serious problem: It’s an online game. With online games comes some of the worst people you could imagine. You’re not forced to play with them, or even talk to them, but you’re forced to see them and play near them. Today I share a story about some real scumbags exploiting a Dynamic Event in the 2nd day of Pre-purchase head-start.

This particular Dynamic Event is currently broken. It’s looping over and over all day long, only occasionally taking a little bit of a break a few minutes long. Sadly, when you get to this event, it’s filled with people exploiting it by sitting there all day long spamming AoE. I filed a bug report and notified people that it was broken, and that they should do it 1-2 times and then leave to avoid getting into any sort of trouble. Some people thanked me and did just that, and I’d like to thank those people for being honest.

Unfortunately, not everyone took my advice. Some even had the balls to argue with me, saying that there are some launch issues, so they’re exploiting until they’re fixed.

Needless to say, this is not acceptable behavior and there’s no acceptable excuse for knowingly breaking the Terms of Service. I’m not sure how visible the names turned out in the screenshots, but by far the most common guild I see in there is [EPIC].