[kridsdale1]

The original Maxis team are the losers here. They worked 4 years to make something they thought would drive the genre forward but were sabotaged by executives who forced them to add DRM which destroyed the franchise when the servers exploded on release day. Then all their assets were transferred to another team who made the mobile version.

[standardUser]

The gameplay imitations were far more severe than the DRM and online stuff. A clean release may not have generated such a brutal backlash, but it wouldn't have resulted in a genuine SimCity successor either.