This is already turning into a PR nightmare

May 29, 2015 09:45 GMT  ·  By

Electronic Arts is making a real effort to show gamers that it's incapable of learning anything from their mistakes and the mistakes of others, so they have just confirmed that the new Need for Speed games will require a permanent Internet connection.

Some of you might remember that a while back Electronic Arts announced SimCity and the fact that it would need a constant online connection. The reasons were numerous, like the fact that a simple PC could do the calculations necessary to run smoothly. The end result was that people could play their games for a few days after launch and the studio eventually released a patch allowing the game to run offline.

Very few publishers have managed to make this online connectivity work, but most of them have failed. We can easily include Electronic Arts and Ubisoft in this category. Despite the painful lessons of the past, Electronic Arts is still trying to sell this online connectivity like a good thing. No one is saying not to have it, but making it mandatory doesn't sit well with the community.

Online connection confirmed for Need for Speed

There were some rumors regarding this "feature," but there wasn't anything official. Now there is. Someone asked on Twitter if it's true that Need for Speed will require internet connection and he got an answer.

"NFS will require an online connection, but the benefits are nice. More variety and a more rewarding experience with friends," reads the entry on Twitter. It sounds like a great sales pitch and the online functionality better be amazing because this decision is going to have a huge blowback.

Unless Electronic Arts manages to convince the community that it's a good thing like Blizzard did with Diablo III, and then the new Need for Speed might just prove to be yet another PR nightmare.

In fact, the community has already reacted, and you can read the tweets from users. There are dozens of them, and everyone is already calling this a mistake, although this is the most innocuous word we could find.