That's my biggest fear; it makes me feel like this:

https://images.nonexiste.net/popular/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Best-rage-gif-ever.gif

They want to get rid of the numbers and introduce a 'new' IP.

Or alternatively people actually like these features and don't give a fuck about DRM at all anyway.

Isn't that their business model now? They shutdown a whole bunch of servers, again, not too long ago.

Why am I not surprised? Also:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/ea_is_still_one_of_the_worst_publishers_on_the_market/page1

See attached image in the first post

did you bother to take a look at the games that were affected by the server shutdown? nobody played that crap anyway.

this.

EDIT: So it isn't "always online" after all?

same difference. you need to be online everytime you want to play. doesn't make much of a difference if a persistent connection is required or if it's just a start-up check. if your internet connection is down the difference won't matter, will it?

this remains unacceptable for me.

i truly fail to see the logic behind EA's decision. it's not like the Sim City series still has a massive following, or that city builders are still selling like hotcakes. if i were EA i'd be glad for every gamer that gets behind the new Sim City game, instead of trying to alienate as many as possible.

I played Saboteur, loved it and will probably replay in future. The game itself is still playable though your DLC is no more.

first of all, it doesn't affect the PC version of the game. second, the server shutdown doesn't make the game unplayable since The Saboteur is a singleplayer game.

you can no longer get the DLC, true, which sucks. solution? get the PC version. it's so cheap these days it's almost free...

Copy the game with DLC to a PC and hope in 10 or 20 years some emulator can run it.

Mine's the PC version, boxed.
A company having a history of shutting down game servers once they assume that people don't play a game anymore, doesn't instill the kind of confidence you need if you're the type that replays old games all the time, e.g. X-COM, Simcity 4 etc.

I don't know where your 180 degree turn comes from, maybe you are trying to be sarcastic, or maybe someone hacked your account and is now writing as you. :)

Anyway, I've been saying that before, ie. if I have an internet connection on when I launch a single-player game, I _probably_ will have it on rest of the gaming session as well. So in essence it doesn't make that much difference to me most of the time.

But "always online" may bring more issues in certain cases, like it usually requires more bandwidth. I might be able to start a "internet authentication upon launch" game even through a poor 2G GPRS connection, while the same connection is probably unusable for always-online games.

dude, i don't know what you mean. i have been strictly against any kind of always-online DRM ever since UbiSoft started it. i have been 'boycotting' all UbiSoft games affected by it.

i have no problem with other forms of DRM as long as they don't affect me negatively. i love Steam, i can tolerate SecuROM and i can deal with ProtectDISC. but always-online DRM is a no-go for me.

also, you won't have to quit the game if your connection breaks down mid-game.

however, my concern is with situations in which i have no reliable connection at all, as has been the case for me since February. or in Summer 2010 my connection was down for a whole 2 weeks due to a hardware malfunction at my ISP's. no way will i ever accept always-online DRM, no matter whether we're talking about a persistent connection or a start-up check.