Electronic Arts' SimCity game hacked

Hackers modified the game's code during debug mode and turned off its disconnect timer.

Electronic Arts (EA) city-building and urban planning simulation video game SimCity has been hacked and converted into a single-player game that allows users to play the game offline almost indefinitely and destroy online cities developed by other players.

Hackers modified the game's code during debug mode and turned off the game's disconnect timer and fiddled with other values, which made it an offline, single-player game.

According to the game-maker, EA, the always-on requirement contributed to huge problems when launching as it attempted to maintain coordination between different players' cities.

EA Maxis label general manager, Lucy Bradshaw, said: "From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind - using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world welive in; a global, ever-changing, social world."

According to reports, since the launch of SimCity on 05 March 2012, several users complained that they had to wait about 30 minutes to play the game.

However, EA defended that these problems were mainly because of sharing several aspects of the game and the rise in users trying to play besieged servers.

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