10 Simple Things That Ruined Major Video Games

For the longest time, SimCity was the gold standard for city-building games. But after the success of The Sims, Maxis put more focus on the lucrative spin-offs, causing SimCity to go dormant. 

But after a decade-long hiatus, a MMO Sim City entry was announced. With a sleek new aesthetic, an updated engine, and a bigger focus on interconnecting cities, expectations were sky-high. 2013's SimCity also highlighted collaborations, encouraging players to trade and share resources.

But in order for this mechanic to work, it was stated the game needed persistent internet connection, even for single-player mode. Not only was this frustrating in its own right, Maxis underestimated demand, leading to massive server queues and crashes.

Even when players got online, it wasn't a particularly fun experience. Due to server performance restraints, cities were petit and glitches were abundant and tricky to fix. Disconnections were common, which regularly led to progress loss.

Although it was initially claimed the online mode was necessary for SimCity to operate, modders were able to run it off-line, tarnishing the company's reputation.

Though there are plenty of titles that received criticism for relying on a permanent online connection, it's hard to think of a game that bungled it worse than SimCity.