You have to remember the type of things EA says, whether true or not. When people pleaded with EA to turn off Sim City's online-only requirements, EA swore up and down that it couldn't be done. They said that the calculations for sim agents are hardcoded into the cloud and the entire game would fail to run without access to EA's servers, which, of course, was a load of shit. Within a month and a half, gamers had successfully taken the game offline while preserving its functionality. EA held fast for a few months, then finally admitted that "after numerous struggles", the game could finally be played offline.
They took so much flak for the entire fiasco that they not only gave away free titles but made it a "selling point" to announce that The Sims 4 would be playable offline. This was back in the spring of '14, so it makes a lot of sense.
Another company having this written about them and I'd write it off as bullshit, but not with EA. They've proven in the past that they can and will do this and whatever else to push whatever policies they're trying to profit off of. They wanted both games online only to cut down on pirating, especially as The Sims is a heavily pirated franchise (go figure with a billion expansion and stuff packs).