10 Video Games That Have Epically Failed This Decade

8. SimCity Is Ruined By DRM

Another game totally hamstrung by its insistence on being inextricably linked to the Internet is SimCity, a game that, in spite of its AI flaws, is a lot of fun to play...if you can remain connected long enough to actually do anything. Maxis and EA clearly hadn't prepared themselves for such an influx of players, yet still insisted on players having a persistent connection to the game's servers to be able to play, widely accepted to be a not-so-subtle form of digital rights management. In addition to this, the multiplayer aspect of the game was reported to be riddled with bugs, and the much-ballyhooed cloud saving system resulted in scores of players losing their progress. The negative response was incredibly overwhelming from players to the point that critics began downgrading their previous reviews of the game once it became clear how inherently broken the always-online system was (as many journalists had played the game under controlled conditions at an EA review event). In addition to all this, the numerous patches intended to fix the game's issues only broke other parts of it, and on March 14th of this year, more than a year after the game was released, a patch allowing players to play offline was finally released. However, by this point it was pretty much too late, and most who bought the game had already got refunds or moved onto games from companies that didn't treat their customers like absolute garbage. A year to release an offline patch? Seriously? What an epic fail.