Electronic Arts (EA) will be offering players who buy and register the latest version of SimCity before 26 March a free game from a selection offered by Ethe company.

The move follows connection problems and glitches caused by EA's decision to make SimCity an online-only game.

EA "sincerely apologized for the difficulties at launch" of the popular game and hopes to make it up to gamers with a free PC game download from Origin.

Starting today, every player that has activated their copy of SimCity will receive an email that will give directions on how to redeem this offer. EA be opening up the redemption portal country-by-country and will be live worldwide for everyone to select their game by March 22.

Here is the list of games that you will be able to choose from once you are able to redeem:

Battlefield 3 (Standard Edition)
Bejeweled 3
Dead Space 3 (Standard Edition)
Mass Effect 3 (Standard Edition)
Medal of Honor Warfighter (Standard Edition)
Need For Speed Most Wanted (Standard Edition)
Plants vs. Zombies
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition

Earlier EA admitted that the game was originally going to be single player. However those proposals were shelved early in the development of the latest version.

Lucy Bradshaw, head of SimCity creator Maxis, said an offline, single-player mode did not fit with its "vision" for the urban-planning game.

She said many players preferred the multiplayer version of the game.

In a blogpost, Ms Bradshaw said Maxis could have built a "subset offline mode" for the game that did away with the need to be constantly connected.

Since SimCity was launched on 5 March, many players have blamed the "always online" requirement for causing bugs, in-game glitches and long waits to play the game.

Some players have called on Maxis to produce a stand-alone version of the game.

But Ms Bradshaw said the always-on requirement was "fundamental" to what the company wanted to do with SimCity and it was "designed" with multiplayer in mind.