SimCity’s offline mode is in ‘final testing’

You can soon build a town in SimCity that lives off the grid. But in this case, “the grid” refers only to publisher Electronic Arts’ servers.

The next big update for the municipal-management title is in its final testing phase, according to developer Maxis. The company didn’t provide a specific time frame for the latest improvements, but it did say the update is coming soon. This is the patch that will remove the online requirement that caused a number of connection problems through the game’s first few weeks. Once it is live, would-be mayors will finally have access to a new single-player mode that will not check for a connection.