SimCity buyers can pick one of 8 free EA Origin games

Two weeks ago we reported that EA/Maxis was “confident” about SimCity’s International launch. However, the game’s UK launch still saw mass server queues, lost cloud saved data, and a myriad of glitches within the game.

Since launch SimCity has been heavily criticized for its “always-online” stance, with Maxis and EA both claiming that offline would have been extremely difficult or perhaps even impossible. Hackers have since proved that it can be achieved by a very small tweak to the game’s code, which this week lead Lucy Bradshaw, General Manager of Maxis, to admit: “So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision.”

However, the developer is now on the case to mend the broken SimBridges following SimCity’s launch with a free PC game to all buyers who register their game before March 25th: “Our SimCity Mayors are incredibly important to the team at Maxis. We sincerely apologize for the difficulties at launch and hope to make it up to you with a free PC game download from Origin.” Meaning if you buy a copy of SimCity in the next 7 days, or already own a copy and have registered it, you get one of the following games absolutely free:

(Source: EA.com’s Blog)