SimCity Always-On Clarified: Needs Internet For Launch

EA have issued a clarification to Gamespy that while you will have to have an internet connection to launch SimCity, it will not boot you off if your connection goes down. Which is to say, it's not as egregious as others' "always-on" DRM, but we maintain is still an unnecessary and game-crippling mistake, which we really hope they will reverse before release. That the game won't stop working if your connection goes down sounds great, but it makes no useful difference to those who wish to play the ostensibly single-player game without an internet connection, whatever the cause. As we've said before, the online features sound like they'll superbly enhance your single-player experience, but enforcing them is cruel and stupid, and renders the game broken for enormous numbers of players. We desperately hope to see EA backing down from this position before release. Just as we expect to see Blizzard come to their senses and not release a self-sabotaged version of Diablo 3. The reality is, unofficial versions of the games will appear very soon after release, offering useful features that the publishers' versions of the games will not. That's simply crazy. We've contacted EA to ask if we can talk to them about this all.