[radiac]

While that is a valid general criticism of Steam, they do provide an offline mode, which the new Sim City does not. Personally I prefer Steam to the previous alternative of having to leave the CD in the drive, or using a dodgy no-cd patch - but that's getting off topic.

The DRM strategy in Sim City is not the same as Steam, and cannot really be compared. EA are forcing unnecessary always-online features into what most people expect to be a single player game, preventing it from being played offline at all, in a thinly veiled attempt to prevent piracy and resale. That would be bad enough, but what makes it utterly unacceptable is that they haven't provided the infrastructure to support it in the short term, and clearly don't have the business model required to support it beyond the first few years.

Why anyone would knowingly support this business practice at all is beyond me, let alone for a game which has had such dubious pre-release reviews and is now essentially unplayable.