Maxis dashes hopes with “no offline” response

SimCity developer Maxis has said that they have no intention of providing offline support for the new management game, but wants to earn back the trust of gamers.

In a Twitter Q&A session, Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw answered some questions from concerned fans, and when questioned about the possibility of an offline patch, Bradshaw’s response wasn’t ideal.

“We have no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon but we’ll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts,” said Bradshaw.

Many fans have pleaded with Maxis and EA for the online requirement to be removed, to which Bradshaw responded: “an online interconnected world has been part of our design philosophy since day one.”

“It wouldn’t be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team,” added Bradshaw.

The launch of always-online SimCity did not go smoothly to say the least, but to say sorry to their fans, EA and Maxis are also offering a free game from the EA catalogue to those who were hamstrung by the launch day problems.

What has your experience of SimCity been so far? Any issues? MyGaming’s editor James originally struggled with many of the issues other gamers were raising, but did manage to get some game time in on Sunday evening.