In less than a week of its release, the latest installment of SimCity-SimCity 5 to some-has undergone a whole lot of progress or regression, depending on whether or not you are one of the players who were still able to play through despite server downtimes.

Here are some more updates, particularly on a free game for registered players, a brewing petition to get rid of the always-on mode, and potentially good news for Mac players who want to get their hands on SimCity 5.

Just recently, GameInformer reports that SimCity just got an update, boosting it to the SimCity 1.3 version where it got an additional Antarctica server. The update also fixed the problem for players who get stuck when switching shards in the server select menu, and displays a previously missing selection shard.

A free game and 120% boost in server capacity

TechCrunch reports that on March 18, SimCity players who already have an Origin account and activated their game will receive an email message that gives the instructions on how to get the free game.

This is EA's way of an apology for a disaster of a release for the much-awaited game of the season.

"In the last 48 hours, we increased server capacity by 120%," said Bradshaw, senior vice president and general manager for Maxis to Joystiq. "It's working-the number of people who have gotten in and built cities has improved dramatically. The number of disrupted experiences has dropped by roughly 80%."

Petition to remove the always-on DRM

As with any always-on DRM games, SimCity is suffering the same fate as the last known fiasco of Diablo III, which had the same drawback during its launch.

And since the launch included five areas, including the US, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the UK, over the course of the week, this means a slower serve capacity from the very first day-which wasn't already satisfactory to begin with.

As such, there as now been a drafted petition now being signed on the US government's Change.org directed to EA. According to Wired.com, this was created by angry players who want to abolish EA's always-on DRM mode so they can play the game in peace.

More than 58,500 have already signed the petition, and the number just seems to be growing.

SimCity 5 for Mac?

SimCity was released for PC, but it seems that Mac users won't be out of the loop any longer-granted they don't get caught up or even add to the ongoing server problems.

According to GameInformer, SimCity publisher EA and developer Maxis are planning to release a version for Mac next month.

In a tweet from SimCity, GameInformer reports, "We're focused on the PC version right now, but we'll have more info on Mac in early April, so stay tuned."

The time lag between releases may be due to the fact that EA is creating an entirely native version, to ensure quality playing for Mac. In addition, iDigital Times reports that the Mac version will be digital-exclusive, and that there will be no differences in regions or worlds for the versions.