[krick]

> This claim was absurd on the face of it; EA couldn't possibly turn a profit if each copy of the game required dedicated beefy-ass server hardware to support it.

Was it? No, I don't think so. I can imagine numerous computation problems that are not viable to solve client-side (i.e. your device "cannot run the simulation"), but are not a real burden on a server-side for a lot of users. Simpliest example: hosting a couple TB large rainbow table.

(Obviously, I'm not discussing that particular game, my objection is to the general claim only.)

[alpaca128]

Elite:Dangerous would be an example of that. The simulated galaxy contains 400 billion star systems and the galaxy map can find routes between any two stars, as far as I know that's all handled by the backend.

Though the difference to something like Sim City is that everyone plays in the same shared game world even in "solo" mode.

[cinntaile]

He is very clearly talking about this specific game. How you interpret the text you quoted as general is hard for me to understand.