Not necessarily. Implementing client-side saving would be trivial compared to the other kinds of DRM that have been successfully bypassed over the years.

Client side saving is already implemented. In a few instances where I disconnected from the server and continued to play, SimCity would try to push my work to the server on reconnect.

At times this wouldn't work and I would lose my progress, but I'm willing to attribute that to the fact that it was supposed to be a rare case backup mechanism, rather than the necessary crutch it is currently.

Important yes, but also presumably fairly simple to reverse engineer.

Gotcha. If that truly is all that's punted to the server we should start seeing cracks in a few weeks, I would think.

And that's the point at which I will consider buying this game. When I can play offline, all the time.