SimCity’s servers were down earlier today for maintenance; enabeling developers EA and Maxis to patch the city-building title to add the long awaited offline mode.

Update 10, the patch that Maxis announced in January adds the ability to play SimCity offline and enables modding the game. It also allows games saved locally onto a player’s computer with no internet connection required.

Shortly after the release of SimCity a year ago it was said that an offline mode would not be possible as it would require too much engineering work. In January a new statement was released saying that they were “exploring the possibility.”

SimCity’s servers are now back online and will prompt players to install Update 10 upon log-in. EA has also provided a short tutorial video on using the offline mode, as seen below.