SimCity didn't do too badly in sales, shifting 2 million units by summer 2013, but the game's disastrous launch is still remembered as a black mark on gaming last year, up there with the launch fails of Diablo 3. Hopefully it will also serve as a warning sign to other companies about the troubles that come with mandatory anti-consumer, always-online play.
Of course, SimCity wasn't the only game with a shoddy launch last year - Grand Theft Auto Online and Battlefield 4 performed some impressive technical belly-flops of their own - but what was particularly frustrating about the server issues was the fact that SimCity is traditionally oriented towards single player gameplay. Many users begged Maxis for a simple offline mode, but the studio claimed that such a thing would be impossible without major engineering work. After we posed the question of whether or not SimCity would go offline for the players, a survey suggested it might be in the works.
Apparently that major engineering work (or, as one anonymous Maxis employee described it, a pretty easy fix) is underway and the next update for SimCity will include the option to play the game offline. A post on the game's official blog reports that the upcoming patch, Update 10, will make all previously downloaded content available offline and will also allow players to save their game locally instead of in the cloud. Just like the good old days.
It can and should be argued that an offline mode should have been available from day one, or at the very least that it shouldn't have taken 10 months to get confirmation that an offline mode was even on the way. Still, perhaps once the patch is available there may be a boost in sales as wary gamers with unreliable internet connections decide to finally pick up their own copies.
Knowing the importance of having a strong modding community, particularly for a PC and OS X exclusive game, Maxis and EA announced last week that SimCity was finally getting mod support. General manager Patrick Buechner once again plugs the modding opportunities for the game in the post, pointing out that "Modders... can now make modifications to the game and its components without compromising the integrity of the Online game."
Update 10 will be available as a free download soon, though Maxis hasn't yet fixed an exact date. Buechner explained, "Our priority is to make sure that it’s as polished as possible before we release it." In light of the game's past, that probably isn't a bad lesson to learn.
Tell us in the comments what you think about the upcoming SimCity patch: better late than never, or too little too late?
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Source: Maxis