(Image Source: Electronic Arts ) BY SCOTT MALONE     Electronic Arts’ reboot of the Sims franchise - SimCity - is experiencing quite the failure to launch. The game requires an online connection — even for single-player mode. As a result: EA’s servers couldn’t handle the initial rush, and some players are being forced to wait to play or are locked out altogether. [Via The New York Times ] A writer for Wired  says even those who can get into the jam-packed servers aren’t having the best time. “Players are finding that the servers, choking to death on the player load, aren’t saving their game progress … Many players are confronted with an error screen, forcing them to choose to either roll back their city to a previous save point or trash the whole thing.” So if EA is having major issues with server overload, then why are they trying to make it an all-online game? An analyst for CNN explains that EA is attempting to curb the number of illegal downloads. “They’re requiring you to be online even if you’re in the single-player mode and the reason they’re doing this is a last ditch effort of authentication so that you don’t pirate the game.” Does that mean EA is more worried about piracy than people buying their game? Not exactly. Gaming news site Polygon got hold of an email from Electronic Arts to several outlets, which said “We ask you to please remove any copy promoting SimCity from your website for the time-being.” So EA is actually trying to suspend marketing of its latest Sims reboot — but can anybody who already bought the game get their money back? Origin - EA’s online game service - recently tweeted:  “Regarding recent confusion: In general we do not offer refunds on digital download games...” ( Via Twitter ) But while many could say that even a digital-version of Rome wasn’t built in a day, apparently neither were SimCity’s servers. And the franchises’ fans have taken note. The reviews of SimCity on Amazon have dropped the game to a one-star rating, and even forced the site to briefly halt its digital downloads of the game. Now though, Amazon simply offers a warning that many customers are having issues with connecting to EA’s servers. A game with a similar internet-based component suffered the same problem last year. Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo III launched last May to days of errors that stemmed from its own always-online requirements. (Via PC Magazine ) But Diablo fans’ complaints didn’t reach the White House like those of SimCity fans. A petition on the White House ’s We the People site called for an industry-wide return policy on games that require you to be online without the server capacity to handle it.