Electronic Arts and Maxis"s official line is that SimCity, the recently released revamp of their urban planning simulation, needs its "always on" Internet connection because the game is tied in too closely to its cloud servers. However, an unnamed developer from Maxis recently told Rock Paper Shotgun that was not the case.
So far, neither EA nor Maxis has commented on the report. Now a new YouTube video has been posted that allegedly shows that a person can play the game offline via a little hacking. The video was posted by a person calling himself "UKAzzer" and shows footage of the game being put into its debug mode, which normally would not be accessible.
The video does seem to show that SimCity could easily be made to be played offline with most of its features intact. Cloud-based game saves and some region features won"t work offline, but that"s basically it. The video footage even shows that SmCity can be played outside its current "borders".
Again, EA and Maxis have yet to comment about why SimCity needs the offline connection other than its own version of copyright protection. Hopefully EA will respond to the growing amount of inquires from players requesting an official offline mode for this game.
Source: YouTube