There’s no denying it – SimCity‘s launch was a massive failure. EA didn’t anticipate the demand, and its always-online DRM scheme failed to compensate for the massive load on the servers. It prevented thousands of players who legitimately purchased the game from playing it. Now EA is trying to make it right… kind of.

While EA won’t offer an offline mode for the game, the publisher is extending an olive branch to SimCity players in the form of a free game. Those who purchased Simcity around launch will be able to redeem one of the following games for free from EA’s Origin store through March 30:

It’s kind of ironic of EA to offer a previous incarnation of the SimCity franchise to those affected by the latest game’s launch. Well, at least those who pick SimCity 4 will be able to play a SimCity game without needing to be constantly online.

It seems that this is as good as its going to get for SimCity players who simply want an offline only experience for the latest game in the franchise. After Maxis pretty much confirmed that an offline mode was possible, it just stings all the more that EA still won’t offer what players want. Despite all of that, SimCity seems to be up and running without any problems at the moment.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the entire SimCity debacle will affect EA’s running in The Consumerist’s Worst Company In America award. It won the “prestigious” award last year, and this latest event might just help the company retain its Golden Poo award.