The internet is on fire over Sid Meier’s Civilization VII as Firaxis Games unveiled Harriet Tubman. Posted on the official X account, it was revealed that historical American Civil War figure Harriet Tubman, who was a part of the Underground Railroad and spy, would be one of the potential leaders players can choose to lead their civilization. An interesting choice to be discussed, for sure. However, there are reasons why gamers should boycott Sid Meier’s Civilization VII which doesn’t necessarily involve this Harriet Tubman “controversy.”
There are other pertinent, underlying issues that are more valid as reasons for why you shouldn’t buy Civilization VII that have nothing to do with the, as of now, unfounded belief voiced by some gamers that Civ 7 might be pushing a DEI, woke agenda. The first thing is that Civilization VII comes packed with Denuvo. A nice, draconian bit of DRM that has been a thorn in the side of gamers for the past decade. Like cockroaches which are hard to get rid of, that is Denuvo.
It’s a DRM that, despite what the company says and can’t fully deny, affects the performance of your PC and usually requires an online connection to work. As a nice bonus, depending on the developer or publisher you purchase your games from, can be rather intrusive. One only needs to look at the majority of video games released by Ubisoft, such as Star Wars Outlaws and its upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which comes with a version of Denuvo that has the added bonus of monitoring your PC’s RAM usage even though the named titles are single player games (which is why you should always read a game’s EULA).
We always recommend that consumers stay away from purchasing a game that implements Denuvo DRM unless, down the road, it is finally removed from the game which happens in some cases.
And that the inclusion of Denuvo should be an automatic boycott of the game no matter who released it or how good it might be.
The second reason for why gamers should boycott Civilization VII is the requirement that a third-party account is needed to play the game which is a first for the Civilization franchise. In this case, you will have to create a 2K account in order to play which is an inconvenience. Many are the times that consumers were unable to enjoy their game because of issues with logging in due to technical hiccups on the developer or publisher’s end that prevented a user’s third-party login information to be verified (we recommend Valve ban third-party account requirements from Steam).
Third-party accounts also bring up security concerns. After all, it provides hackers with an additional vector to try and hack your PC. Whether by directly targeting your PC or via the developer or publisher when they get hacked; exposing your information and leaving it up for grabs. Such accounts are also used to monitor your activities on the PC outside of gaming in order to gather information. Information that, in some cases, is sold to other companies like Facebook.
Unless you enjoy having to login to another account to play your games, relish the idea of a hacker being provided another way to access your PC, or rely on the developer and publisher’s own services to be up and running, and the possibility of no longer playing your game if that same company goes out of business, then feel free to pay $70.
Of course, paying $70 for a digital copy of a game that you do not own or have any rights to is the final reason for why you shouldn’t purchase Civilization VII. To be fair, no one should pay $70 for a video game. Especially a digital copy. But as someone who has been playing Civilization games since the original came out back in 1991, and installed it on every school computer, it pains me to even think of not getting the latest game.
But the fact that Civilization VII now comes with Denuvo, requires a third-party account, and a $70 price tag for a game that most likely will have plenty of DLC, like previous installments, means that Civilization fans should be boycotting the game.
The debate on if Civilization VII is woke or not because Firaxis showcased Harriet Tubman is a topic for a different article. There just isn’t enough about the game to draw such a conclusion. But, as stated before, there are more valid reasons for not buying Civilization VII than screeching about woke agenda this and woke agenda that.
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