10 Things That Prove EA Have Completely Lost Their Way
2. Always-Online DRM Ruining SimCity
Although the problem has subsided somewhat recently, back in 2013 EA somehow managed to completely ruin SimCity with always-online DRM.
The problem with having always-online DRM is that it essentially gives games a timer. When games eventually have their servers taken away, games like SimCity will be rendered completely unplayable.
Always-online DRM also means that if a game has too much server demand, players won't even be able to get into the game they just paid full price for, which is exactly what happened to SimCity when it launched. It didn't help that a huge chunk of SimCity's features were reliant on the online portion of the game.
The situation got so bad that Amazon had to temporarily remove the game for download after it was pelted with hundreds of one star reviews. Although an offline mode was added a year after the game's launch, it doesn't excuse the fact that SimCity was launched in such a poor state.