Cities XL tried the same thing EA was pulling. Their launch was also a debacle, everyone got mad at them, and they had to shut all their online servers down for

Cities XL tried the same thing EA was pulling. Their launch was also a debacle, everyone got mad at them, and they had to shut all their online servers down for lack of money, leaving people with a functional single-player game but a fraction of the functionality they had anticipated (for example: no railroads, subways, or anything like that.) Which is a bit of a shame, since _City Life_ (the predecessor) was an okay game.