Its limited when you play as if your on a wifi only device you have to be in a wifi area, if you have a mobile data plan it's easy to go over the usage allowance and get extra charges. It wouldn't put me off buying a title that was online only, I'd just buy it knowing I'll only be able to play at home with my wifi connection, I have a mobile data plan but it would easily get eaten up.
If it's an iPad game then I'll most likely only be able to play it at home. Public places typically have weak WiFi here, so loading times would take forever. If it's an iPhone game I could use my mobile data outside, but that + the game would make the phone's battery run out even faster. I'm not totally opposed to internet games, but I'd rather play offline games because it's much less of a hassle. I can just pick my device up and play.
Your answer is right in your question. They require an internet connection. So if you are somewhere without wifi, you cannot access the game.
Beyond all the practical issues with data plan overages and difficulty playing on wifi-only devices, it goes deeper than that: Developers of single player games that require an internet connection treat their customers like criminals. It's disrespectful to the people giving them their money and attention, plain and simple.
Because so many games/apps require an internet connection, it's one of the main reasons I tend to only buy universal apps - so that I will be able to access them on my phone when I'm not using my iPad at home on wifi.
Because not everyone can afford a good connection. Sometimes regions are not well served. In some countries internet providers suck. When there's a lag, disruptance etc you can lose your gameplay...Need more?
Can you blame them though? I mean, the recent Modern Combat piracy drama just goes to show you that you can't even trust the most excited members of your fan base to not steal everything you release without some kind of remote kill switch.
Honestly, yeah I can. Like many forms of DRM, it's a pain in the arse for the honest people, but will no doubt be quickly circumvented by the hackers (who I think quite enjoy the challenge of DRM) so it winds up punishing the wrong people.
One thing for sure has aMMC4 player I never really met hackers. And the hacker problem can be fix by the community. For example if you know a hacker you shouldn't play with him or against him. Isolate the hacker so he will have one choice: play by the rules.
All I am going to say is most people carry cell phones and most of those phones can create hotspots. So honestly I don't care about online only. Also I work so if I get a chance to play its only for a little bit before work and then again on my lunch. I know people will say tethering costs money because of data plans and such but not that much more data.
To a certain degree, I do think they are at fault. I don't follow much about iOS piracy because the entire thing doesn't make any sense to me (who the hell would steal something that costs less than a cup of coffee?!), but at least in the PC piracy scene, determined pirates tend to crack any online requirements almost immediately before uploading the apps. While developers' motivations may be sound in trying to protect their apps, it simply doesn't work for more than a day or two. The people who end up suffering are the best customers: people who choose to do the right thing and pay for their games. The people who do the wrong thing and steal the game get a superior experience with no online requirements.
Yeah but by that rationale you're basically saying they shouldn't even bother trying to combat piracy. In an increasingly connected world, I think an always online requirement is much less abrasive than some other DRM horror stories I've heard in the past. And it's already proven to work, seeing as how the cracked MC5 was invalidated and hacks that sprung up have already been disabled. Sure, there will be more hacks discovered and I'm sure someone will figure out how to make a pirated offline version, but could you imagine what this launch would be like if they DIDN'T have the online requirement? MC5 would be dead and buried, so so SO dead and buried, before it even launched. So while piracy is an ongoing and often lost battle, it's a battle worth continuing to fight, and eventually we might come up with a solution that both combats piracy and is as friendly as possible to paying customers. I just don't get all the righteous indignation over this topic. I mean, you KNOW well beforehand that it's going to require online, so if you buy it anyway and are pissed about it, that's on YOU (you in general, not specifically you ).
A lot of sales can be lost in a day or two, everyone who isn't making free to play garbage is struggling right now. A day or two lead time where the only way to get a game is to buy it could mean the additional payroll budget for someone to keep their job between projects instead of getting laid off. Game development is a brutal business, and talking to developers so much as part of my job has totally opened my eyes to how totally disposable most entry-level gigs are to higher ups that just look at rows in spreadsheets. There's a whole ecosystem that a lot of people don't think about because they just get mad at a mild personal inconvenience. Pirates are a real problem, and very few game developers are laughing all the way to the bank. Instead, they're just trying to keep their lights on. Especially with games like MC5 that sell for $7, it only takes a few thousand copies pirated instead of purchased to make a full person's salary.
There is a big difference between targeting people who are doing the wrong thing and targeting everyone, that's where we disagree. I absolutely do think they should combat piracy - by actually targeting pirates, not by punishing customers. If they detect people playing with pirated copies online, lock them out immediately. Ban their GameCenter accounts, delete their scores, stop them from contaminating the game for the rest of us. I think you're conflating two different issues, because to me, an online-only requirement has nothing to do with punishing pirates online. In fact, it's exactly the opposite, because any offline cracked version of the game would be immune to blocking by definition. Think about it: when the pirates download a cracked single-player-only version of MC5, how exactly is Gameloft going to punish them for that? Gameloft will never even see the pirate sign in because it's offline only - they can't ban them, block them, restrict them, or anything else. That's part of the point of cracking an online requirement in the first place. Which brings me back to the original point: the only people who suffer from online-only requirements are those who do the right thing and purchase. But as for the subject of "righteous indignation", the only reason I'm bringing this up at all is because that's what this particular thread is dedicated to. I'm not exactly going to the release thread for MC5 and saying "online only sucks lol don't download F* game loft"
That's an argument that developers have been bringing up for years, but if it were true, there is a simple recourse: patch the game to have an offline mode a few weeks after launch. Perhaps it's a naive way of thinking about it, but I've always believed the best way to combat piracy is to reward people for doing the right thing. Make it both easier and better to do good, and most people will. The people who won't were never going to be your customers anyways. Here's an example: I'm not sure if you've been involved in the PC gaming scene much, but for years, games used to have a requirement that the CD be left in the drive constantly during play. That was sort of the late-'90s-early-'2000s version of the always online requirement. You'd have to drive down to the store, buy the game, take it home, then there would generally be a serial number you'd have to find in the manual. After entering that in, you'd still have to leave the CD in the drive while you play, constantly. That was what the experience was like for those who do the right thing. The people who did the wrong thing would boot up some program on their computer, enter a URL, and in a bit they'd have the game downloaded and ready to play, no serial number, box, cd, or drive to the store required. Steam changed all of that in the mid-2000s. Suddenly, all of those pain points that punished legitimate customers went away, and you could download the game legally even EASIER and faster than you could by doing the wrong thing. In fact, by doing the right thing and buying your games on Steam, you had an even BETTER experience than the pirates did, because you'd get cloud saves, unlimited downloads on any computer, multiplayer - lots of great things that pirates can't have. I'm not sure what the exact parallel on iOS is, since the App Store already provides a great experience, but I think developers should be thinking more along these lines. How do we reward people for doing the right thing, how do we make it an even better experience... I'd like to see more developers asking those questions.
