Gaming

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/14umm1/we_are_the_simcity_dev_team_from_maxis_amaa/c7gmhqu

check out this on reddit from yesterday.
There have been people claiming that you can continue to play if your internet goes out...it just required an internet connection to start up.
This is the dev answer to that:
"We will allow you to play for as long as we can preserve your game state. This will most likely be minutes."

I've been playing MMOs for almost ten years. Every single annoyance and pain-in-the-ass of being required to be online to play a game I have experienced...luckily I seem to have avoided any hacking or theft due to it though.
There is absolutely NO benefit to the player to require anyone who isn't interested in multiplayer or an MMO to be connected to the internet to play. NONE.
Piracy is not the gamer's problem. It's the problem of the game producers. If it is such a big problem for them then it is their responsibility to come up with a solution that doesn't antagonize and inconvenience legitimate customers.