Seemingly determined to never learn from their own mistakes and crush all hope for the Need for Speed reboot before gameplay footage has even been shown EA today revealed via Twitter that their forthcoming restart of the racing series will require an Internet connection to play. It’s like the SimCity fiasco never even happened.

@DeanRheims NFS will require an online connection, but the benefits are nice. More variety and a more rewarding experience with friends.

— Need for Speed (@NeedforSpeed) May 28, 2015

Needless to say people were not happy with the news, and rightfully so. Previous NFS games have played with the idea of online worlds where you can race alone or with other people seamlessly, but have also had an offline option because…well, because to not have one is outright stupid. EA faced a substantial backlash over SimCity as the game absolutely had to have an Internet connection to work, causing huge problems as everytime connection was lost or EA’s servers failed, a frequent occurence, nobody could play the game.

It makes about as much sense in a racing game. Presumably there will be AI opponents in the game, so the lack of an offline mode is baffling. They claim the benefits are nice, and they probably are, but that’s hardly a compelling argument for not having a true offline mode.