"With enough processing offloaded to the server, would-be pirates need to write something that's almost a whole new game." Sure, and with sufficient bandwidth

"With enough processing offloaded to the server, would-be pirates need to write something that's almost a whole new game." Sure, and with sufficient bandwidth and computational power you could actually hide all the game logic using a secure computation protocol. Only a complete idiot would do that for something as performance-intensive as a video game. The problem here is that we do not have reliable or fast Internet connections. As soon as your connection has a burp, or you get hit with some bufferbloat, or half your neighborhood starts streaming the Super Bowl in 1080p, your game starts to play worse. What EA failed to realize here is that the best way to make money in games is to offer a superior online gaming platform, not to try to sell individual games as products. Microsoft figured that out with XBox Live a long time ago.