The patch would cost a lot more development dollars. In order to make always-on DRM effective there needs to be some significant logic kept on the company servers. If it was a simple on/off switch it would be very easy to break. Thus, creating a patch to move that logic from the company servers to the players computer is going to cost a lot of money at a time when the company is shutting down the servers because they're trying to save money. Not going to happen.
>The patch would cost a lot more development dollars. In order to make always-on DRM effective there needs to be some significant logic kept on the company servers.
Well, there's that and the fact that this is a really mature genre. This year's Sim City game isn't any more fun to play than the one from 20 years ago, so they're probably afraid more copies will start circulating and cut into current sales.
