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Players who buy and register the latest version of SimCity before March 26 can choose a free game from a selection offered by Electronic Arts (EA).

The free games, available as digital downloads, include recent releases Mass Effect 3, Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled 3.

The move follows connection problems and glitches caused by EA’s decision to make SimCity an online-only game.

Earlier EA admitted that the game was originally going to be single player.

However, those proposals were shelved early in the development of the latest version.

The admission came as players are finding ways to get round the game’s need to be constantly connected.

Lucy Bradshaw, head of SimCity creator Maxis, said an offline, single-player mode did not fit with its “vision” for the urban-planning game.

She said many players preferred the multiplayer version of the game.

Players who buy and register the latest version of SimCity before March 26 can choose a free game from a selection offered by Electronic Arts

Players who buy and register the latest version of SimCity before March 26 can choose a free game from a selection offered by Electronic Arts

In a blogpost, Lucy Bradshaw said Maxis could have built a “subset offline mode” for the game that did away with the need to be constantly connected.Since SimCity was launched on March 5, many players have blamed the “always online” requirement for causing bugs, in-game glitches and long waits to play the game.

To get around the always-on requirement, some players have tinkered with the game’s computer code to trick it into thinking it is connected when it is being played offline. Others have called on Maxis to produce a stand-alone version of the game.

But Lucy Bradshaw said the always-on requirement was “fundamental” to what the company wanted to do with SimCity and it was “designed” with multiplayer in mind.

The decision to do this had not come from “corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to control players”, wrote Lucy Bradshaw.

Maxis had gone down the multiplayer road to make the simulation more realistic by letting cities in the same virtual landscapes share elements such as pollution, crime and resources such as coal, she said.

The multiplayer element was also essential for other aspects of the game, including the building of historic buildings and landmarks and to help players cope with world events and challenges.

There were undoubtedly some players that wanted to build a “single city in isolation” as in older games but just as many were “loving the always-connected functionality”, she said.

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Ongoing problems with the latest version of SimCity led Amazon to briefly stop selling the game.

Amazon stopped sales late on March 7 as players reported continued problems with the city building title.

The latest version of SimCity was launched on March 5 and, like many current games, demand players stay online as they play.

EA has also taken steps to fix login delays by turning off some features to lighten the load on game servers.

Prior to this latest release, SimCity was a stand-alone game, but EA has added the online element to infuse the title with more realism.

Now player cities exist as part of online regions and share some characteristics of those virtual environments such as pollution, crime and essential resources.

The online requirement is also seen as an attempt to curb piracy of the title as a web connection is required even if a player shuns the chance to connect their cities to others.

However, the requirement for all players of the game to be connected has led some to wait 30 minutes or more to play. The server problems have led to sluggish response times, crashes and other bugs.

Ongoing problems with the latest version of SimCity led Amazon to briefly stop selling the game

Ongoing problems with the latest version of SimCity led Amazon to briefly stop selling the game

Amazon’s sales suspension of the downloadable PC version of the game only lasted a few hours, but it has put a warning note on the product page about the “issues” with the game. These have contributed to the one-star score purchasers have given SimCity on Amazon.

In official discussion forums and on its Twitter feed EA has apologized for the trouble players have had.

In one of its latest messages, an EA spokeswoman said it had added server capacity and rolled out a quick fix to SimCity servers to speed up game play and get more people into the game.

To lighten the load on its back-end servers, EA turned off some features including leader boards and achievements. It has also removed the option to run the game at its fastest setting, known as “cheetah speed”. Instead, all cities will now run at the lower “llama speed”.

In a message posted to the official EA discussion forums, SimCity’s senior producer Kip Katsarelis said the launch week had been “challenging” for the company.

However, he added, there was a positive side to the delays.

“What we saw was that players were having such a good time they didn’t want to leave the game, which kept our servers packed and made it difficult for new players to join,” he wrote

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