It’s been nearly a year since SimCity was released, but Maxis finally confirmed on Sunday that the game will be receiving an offline mode “as soon as possible.” The SimCity debacle has been one of the strangest gaming catastrophes in recent history, filled with misinformation, botched launches and an angry mob of gamers refusing to settle for a product that didn’t live up to expectations. By the time SimCity was back in gamers’ good graces and most of the major issues had been resolved, the game had become all but irrelevant.
Although SimCity was poised to be nothing more than a footnote in the long history of DRM failures, Maxis refused to give up without a fight. Back in October, General Manager Patrick Buechner said in a blog post that the team was “exploring the possibility of an offline mode,” but he couldn’t make any promises and didn’t have a release date in mind.
Three months later, Buechner is back with official confirmation that “SimCity Offline is coming.” According to the blog post, “Offline is coming as a free download with Update 10 to all SimCity players.”
“In Update 10, you can still play solo in Regions on your own, or in Multiplayer with people from around the world,” says Buechner. “What’s new is the Single Player Mode, which allows you to play the game Offline by yourself. And because your saved games in this mode are stored locally, you can save and load to your heart’s content. Our team will be delivering a follow-up blog that will outline the full details in the near future so stay tuned.”
It remains to be seen whether the introduction of an offline mode will finally convince weary gamers to pick up SimCity, but the dedication of Maxis to make sure its fans are satisfied is notable. Hopefully once Update 10 launches later this year, the modding community will breathe new life into the game and give us all a reason to jump back in to SimCity.
