Rising (10+)Notable (20+)Popular (30+)Promoted (Front Paged!)
People you followTaggedGeneral - Opinion/EditorialCommunity ReviewsOff-topicCommunity PodcastersBloggers Wanted ResponseLetters to Dtoids EditorsGet InvolvedGeneral BadassnessJoin a Live Stream EventListen to CommunitoidJoin a Playdate EventCompete in a Contest
SimCity can be played offline, according to anyone but EA
There is mounting evidence that, despite EA Maxis' claims to the contrary, SimCity is wholly capable of being played offline -- a capability that would have saved buyers a week of hassle and tons of creativity now lost to server issues. Let's start with what the gamers have discovered. Lately, some modding has led to a fully playable offline debug version. Fancy that! There's a snag, of course -- this bit of hackery is unable to save or load all your progress, since EA opted to control your data on its end. Still, the game is able to be taken fully offline for an indefinite period of time, putting paid to suggestions that online play was inseparably woven into the experience. Interestingly, this "debug mode" of the game still syncs with EA Maxis' servers, and can at least save road placements made outside of the normal boundaries of the game. This discovery follows reports by Rock, Paper, Shotgun that an anonymous insider is claiming SimCity never needed to remain online, and can actually go offline at any moment. While Maxis' Lucy Bradshaw claims offline play would require "a significant amount of engineering work from our team to rewrite the game," faceless informants cry foul. "The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing," claims RPS' source. "They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything. I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise. It’s possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I’m clueless." It's suggested the server doesn't even react to your gameplay in real-time, and that it can take a few minutes for it to check your session for hacks or cheats. The bottom line is that, according to those who aren't in Electronic Arts' thrall, it wouldn't take much effort at all to get your an offline version of SimCity -- barring, of course, the game's regional features. But of course, Electronic Arts made a bold stand on this issue, and is expected to pridefully stick to its guns. All the while, its resolute determination to keep players online will continue to confirm something I think was obvious -- the always-online requirement was only ever a business decision, not one made to enhance the gameplay. The end goal was to keep tabs on players at all times, and control their behavior beyond the point of sale, because EA is terrified of its own audience. It's DRM in sheep's clothing, and the longer EA decides to keep SimCity online, the clearer that becomes. Did you know? You can now get daily or weekly email notifications when humans reply to your comments.
7:15 PM on 06.19.2013 Jimquisition: Xbox One No DRM Emergency SpecialXbox One Eighty more like HA HA HA HA HA! Jimquisition rushes to bring a half-baked opinion in the afterfall of Microsoft reversing its DRM policy on Xbox One.
6:00 PM on 06.19.2013 Day-one patch needed for Xbox One DRM policy changesSony went in a different direction than Microsoft with respect to always-on requirements and used games, and the latter company didn't hear the end of it. We certainly weren't buying the explanations. But that's in the past, ...
3:37 PM on 06.19.2013 Microsoft to drop Xbox One DRM, region locking[Update: It's true. Microsoft has reversed its policies. There's only a one-time system setup that requires an Internet connection -- no daily check-ins. Discs work like they have in the past -- they'll need to be in your con...
3:00 PM on 06.17.2013 Jimquisition: PS4 - Doing Nothing, Meaning EverythingSony created a magic moment this past week at E3, declaring for the world that PS4 would not restrict used games or utilize DRM. Power to the people! Of course, it can be said Sony didn't actually do anything, yet is being l...
10:00 AM on 06.17.2013 Xbox One has 'single handedly alienated the military'Regular gamers have expressed quite a bit of upset at Xbox One's ridiculous DRM policies, but nowhere is the disdain more keenly felt -- nor more justified -- than that coming from America's armed services. Considering the tr...
1:31 PM on 06.12.2013 Sony: We're going to treat the PS4 like the PS3It was rumored that Sony came to the decision to oppose DRM-laden policies very late in the game in response to Microsoft, but that's not so, according to Sony. At a Sony Roundtable today, President of Sony's Worldwide Studio...
1:53 PM on 06.11.2013 Did Sony confirm DRM on PS4 after all? Not quite
surf dtoid with 
follow
