[pyrocat]

I think the larger point is that when EA decides it is no longer profitable to pay for Sim City servers, the game (singleplayer experience and all) will simply cease to exist. There will be no searching through old boxes to find that install CD and take a trip down memory lane. There will be no reinstalling from Steam to show your friend this cool game mechanic. The game will die a full and permanent death, the equivalent of which would be a self-destruct timer on your physical game disc. This list is a list of games that EA has already decided to kill the multiplayer capacity, but I think the point the OP was trying to make was "What if all of these games had the same DRM Sim City does today?", they wouldn't just be a lessened gaming experience because no multiplayer, they would be gone forever.

We have the expectation with an MMO (where we pay a monthly fee to keep playing in an online persistent world) that it won't last forever, but Sim City has traditionally been a single player game. There are ostensibly reasons to have an online component for the new Sim City that is outside of the realm of DRM, but if you think about it, those reasons (players control other cities in your region) could easily be duplicated with simple AI or local multiplayer. Instead of going that route, EA decided that this game would live as long as it decided it was profitable and no longer.

[aeturnum]

I took away a different message from that post. The games referenced all have multiplayer components, but did not require the game servers to play single player. It's an 'apples and oranges' kind of situation. Especially as, if EA were to shut down the Simcity servers, it would have to stop selling the game. If the multiplayer is only a part of the games revenue, it's easier to shut down.