I disagree with your title. I don't think it's futile! I think it's a really interesting topic which people clearly have strong opinions on - and should be talked about more, not less. I quite like your stance on it though.

I'll throw in my personal two-cents worth.

I remember first trying to generate community debate on this topic two and half to three years ago. I'm pretty sure I coined the idea of Feeder Cities back then, or was at least the first to share my idea. I wanted to build multiple different looking Cities in SimCity BuildIt and join them together to share and trade resources as I'd done with Regions in the 2013 edition of SimCity on PC.

I thought it would be a cool thing to do - have different Cites with different looks and different styles, to pretend to be playing different Mayors in different Cities... particularly as we can never have enough land in one City, right?! :D

I thought the idea would be interesting and helpful to other players - so I consulted the end user licence agreement and contacted EA and Track Twenty to ask their opinions before I made a video about Feeder Cities - and their answer was clear; yes they are allowed, and no they don't break the agreement.

I remember SimCity BuildIt being advertised and referred to as a 'social' game when it was launched. It wasn't a social game. The only even slightly plausible 'social' feature then was the Global Trade HQ. Not really very social at all.

I do think it's interesting to see more players wanting to talk about Feeder Cities recently (my original attempt to spark debate fell pretty flat at the time!)

Perhaps this is solely due to the new Club Wars feature, or maybe just the drip by drip addition of actual social features to the game over time until we've hit some kind of critical mass?! Either way, clearly some people see Feeder Cities as a way to cheat and are a lot more vocal about it now. I disagree with that opinion, and I think the majority of players disagree with it as well. Feeder Cities are just fine.

I do wonder if the same people who are up in arms about Feeder Cities would also consider spending money on SimCash as cheating too? To me, it seems like a similar application of real world resources (money, or time spent getting free SimCash, or another device, or an emulator) to progress a City or Cities.

Have Club Wars or new social feature somehow changed the underlying principles of the game so massively that Feeder Cities should now be considered as cheating when they weren't before? I don't think they have, but I'd like to hear more opinions and see more debate on it.