Could he tell if the problem was recognized by EA/Maxis?
I don't think it's server-related though. I'm on South America.
The new patch 1.8 doesn't even mention anything about crashes: https://help.ea.com/article/simcity-updates
He couldn't tell me anything. He did say it was a weird problem and that there's nothing in the system about a work around for it so my guess is that they don't even know it is a problem.
What was your free game?
I downloaded Mass Effect 3 and had the exact same issue... maybe it's something Origin?
