Another tidbit related to how difficult it would or would not be to remove the online requirement from the new SimCity is posted on NeoGAF (thanks nin via Kotaku), where a post shows a snippet of code allegedly from the urban planning reboot that forces the game to shutdown after being disconnected from the internet 20 minutes (there's an accompanying post saying that the data files for SimCity are stored in the same format as The Sims 3, which means their inner workings are easily accessed through tools and techniques developed to modify the earlier game). Though this is unconfirmed, a 20 minute timeout does fit with Kotaku's report last week that they were able to play the game for a bit over 19 minutes after disconnecting from the Internet.