Maxis developer claims SimCity doesn’t actually need servers

Before the recent SimCity reboot, none of the previous five SimCity games released on the PC have required an Internet connection in order to function. However, the new SimCity can’t be played without one, and due to EA being plain dumb, that fact resulted in one of the worst game launches in recent memory.

All along, the official line from EA and Maxis has been that the game requires an Internet connection to function. That’s due to the forced multiplayer/social aspects and the way gamers can impact each other’s cities, but also, and according to Maxis studio head Lucy Bradshaw, because the game “offload[s] a significant amount of the calculations to our servers.”

It sounds backwards to offload calculations to a server when gamers have a powerful desktop CPU and GPU sitting on their desk, and that claim has now been called into question by a developer who actually works at Maxis and is/was involved with SimCity directly.

Talking to Rock, Paper Shotgun, and understandably wanting to remain anonymous, the developer claims that SimCity’s requirement for servers to run is actually false, as are the claims that significant calculations are done on the servers. All the servers are used for is to handle saves in the cloud and message routing. The core game doesn’t actually need a server connection to function.

The developer went on to say that removing the features that require a server “wouldn’t take very much engineering” to achieve, and in fact people are managing to play offline for short periods of time already (19 minutes in Kotaku’s tests), backing up these claims and showing how offline the game really is.

So what does this actually mean? On the face of it this looks like EA is making the features that require a server look far more important than they actually are. In reality, the main purpose of that server link is to ensure the game isn’t subject to piracy and remains linked to EA’s Origin system until such a time as they don’t want to pay for the servers required to run SimCity anymore.

The irony in all of this is that the compulsory server connection and terrible launch has meant there’s an even greater desire for the game to be cracked and an offline mode introduced.

EA and Maxis are now in a difficult position due to the growing evidence that SimCity doesn’t require a server. Do they come out and admit as much, or provide sufficient evidence to convince us otherwise? We don’t mind which of those we get, but we do need a definitive answer.