The bad PR move imo is that the company stated that the game requires "online access to servers for cloud calculations", but users have found a single line of code that when removed allows the game to work in offline play because it disabled the connection check every 20 minutes.
http://kotaku.com/5991077/your-complete-guide-to-the-simcity...
The bad PR move imo is that the company stated that the game requires "online access to servers for cloud calculations", but users have found a single line of code that when removed allows the game to work in offline play because it disabled the connection check every 20 minutes.
http://kotaku.com/5990997/coders-discover-20+minute-offline-...
But in general, EA is reviled for taking good IP/brands and killing them.
Here's a letter that was on reddit from an internal employee to the EA management:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/19xb2m/a_letter_from...