"Why do I need to be online to play this?" There are many answers to this with varying degrees of truth. I suspect the truest answer is because by forcing you

"Why do I need to be online to play this?" There are many answers to this with varying degrees of truth. I suspect the truest answer is because by forcing you to be online to play it it becomes substantially more difficult for you to pirate it. The status quo for "big studio" PC game developers these days is to make a game tied to online as a form of DRM and then invent reasons for it to have to be online.