I bought both when they came out, and the user hostile stuff didn't bother me at all. What killed sim city was most definitely the performance issues. Unless they had a better reason for restricting the maximum city size.
And then the fact that skylines had both a larger play area and more fancy city building features was just the killing blow.
EA got caught out, thinking they could leisurely bring out an inferior product, when a competitor emerged guns blazing.
Yeah, the user-hostile DRM stuff was really just the icing on the cake. people regularly tolerate all that same stuff when the game is actually good. but when the game is shit, it makes it really easy to take a pricipled stance that you're boycotting the game because of DRM.
> Unless they had a better reason for restricting the maximum city size.
They did! EA wanted you to play the game online. They encouraged you to connect your city with other players by making it difficult for cities to be self-sufficient.
