After 10 months of saying that the game needs to always be connected to the internet for the game to run its complex calculations despite evidence to the contrary, Maxis has finally found a way to make 2013’s SimCity work when playing offline. In a blog post, Maxis’s GM says that Update #10 will include a mode that will allow you to play when you’re not connected to the internet.

In the announcement, Patrick Buechner,  General Manager of Maxis’s Emeryville studio said:

“Offline is coming as a free download with Update 10 to all SimCity players. When we launch it, all of your previously downloaded content will be available to you anytime, anywhere, without the need for an internet connection. We are in the late phases of wrapping up its development and while we want to get it into your hands as soon as possible, our priority is to make sure that it’s as polished as possible before we release it.”

What Buechner didn’t say was that they didn’t really need to do much polishing work. Reports as far back as a couple week’s after the game launched indicated that the game could run just fine offline so long as you changed one line of code that caused the game to time out after 20 minutes without an internet connection.

Buechner also mentioned that modding would be opened up more in the Offline Single Player mode. The online game modes allowed for only visual mods rather than anything that affected gameplay. The addition of a fully offline mode will, according to Maxis, allow for modders to “make modifications to the game and its components without compromising the integrity of the Online game.”

So the good news is that SimCity has gotten its much-needed official offline game mode. However, it’s probably too little, too late. People have long since moved on from the game and Maxis’s goodwill has long since been eroded by the launch and lying about the necessity of always-online gameplay.

Source: SimCity.com