【原新聞標題+鏈接】Gamers hacks SimCity to run offline
BBC News 15/03/2013
原文 （原文后有淺見，不要上一頁啊啊啊啊）
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SimCity has almost been turned into a single-player game by an enterprising hacker.
By modifying the game's code, the hacker has made it possible to play the game offline almost indefinitely.
The feat sits at odds with assertions by Electronic Arts (EA) that the game requires a permanent online link.
EA said the "always on" requirement contributed to big problems at launch as it tried to keep different players' cities co-ordinated.
Soon after SimCity was launched on 5 March, many people reported that they were having to wait up to 30 minutes or more to play the game.
Others reported sluggish performance and others bugs as they played. EA said these problems occurred because many aspects of the game were shared and the sheer number of people trying to play overwhelmed servers.
The ongoing problems led EA to apologise for the "dumb" way it set up the launch and led to it adding servers behind the scenes to spread the load.
However, claims that the title needs to be permanently connected so data can be shared have been whittled away by players. Some have unplugged their web connection and found that SimCity can last for 20 minutes before it needs to check in with back-end servers.
The always-online requirement won criticism from many players who said it was unnecessary and was more about preventing piracy than improving gameplay.
Now, a gamer going by the alias of AzzerUK has revealed on social news site Reddit how he turned off the requirement to be online all the time.
By rewriting the game's code during "debug mode" AzzerUK turned off the game's disconnect timer so it never checked whether it was online or offline. He also fiddled with other values to almost convert it to an offline, single-player game.
City saved
"Your PC can handle your entire city simulation without any help from the internet or EA's servers," he wrote in a detailed explanation posted to the Pastie website. Videos showing the game working offline were also posted to YouTube.
The work lent weight to claims made on the Rock Paper Shotgun website by an unnamed worker at SimCity Creator Maxis who said a permanent connection was not always needed.
However, added AzzerUK, there was no way as yet to save a copy of a city to a home PC. Instead the copy had to be downloaded from EA's servers.
"Local saves will not be possible with simple editing, but may be possible with some serious work and ingenuity," he said.
EA said it did not comment on "rumour and speculation" when asked about AzzerUK's hack by games news site Eurogamer.
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上面基本上就是在說EA承認遊玩時需要保持網路連線‘很蠢’
盜版界本來就是一個猖狂的地方，尤其是現在反盜版業越來越精明了。電影區塊不說，一直沒有成長。
來看看遊戲業：
遊戲從免CD開始，到現在連需要全程保持連線的單人遊戲都可以破解了，想必業者非常的氣憤吧？不過我覺得消費者才是真正氣憤的那個。
一個單機遊戲竟然需要連線才可以遊玩，那當初爲什麽會選擇玩單機遊戲？如果我想在車旅的時候玩，結果沒有網路，是不是就不能玩了？還是該公司其實開發的時候收了一大筆電信公司的錢……？需要登入的單人遊戲，去年風靡的有暗黑破壞神三，還有很多，可是暗黑三影響力最大。
暗黑三剛出的時候，問題連連，到最後玩家流失，造成了暴雪非常大的傷害，後來還有更極端的消費者甚至揚言不再買暴雪的遊戲（本人是其中一個）。當大家在開心的玩著半成品暗黑三的時候，結果斷線了，還好，只是正在跟NPC對話而已。開心的打王，結果斷線了，當場翻桌。
就連高峰期的時候還要‘排隊’來登入伺服器玩這個所謂的單機遊戲。
相信SimCity的玩家也知道，這個遊戲好玩在可以設置很多東西，甚至更多的樂趣在於修改MOD，讓原本的遊戲更加多元化，更加的豐富有趣。可是一個需要連線，需要被監視（我想用之前的裸體MOD……)。讓我這個消費者是在大為不悅啊！
試問，如果手機不連上網際網路就不能用，那是不是很多電話都不能打了？只能玩玩貪食蛇這樣？
不僅盜版玩家不悅（破解出了其實無所謂），正版玩家也相當的憤慨。很多正版玩家反而因此而墮落了盜版之路，就爲了公司的反盜版，弄巧成拙了。
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