That is what Lucy Bradshaw, head of developer Maxis, wrote on EA’s blog. Earlier, the company had indicated that players would not simply be able to get their money back, but the publisher is now trying to limit the damage with additional compensation.
According to Bradshaw, the game’s popularity is the cause of the problems. Far more players tried to log in at the same time than EA had expected, causing the servers to become overloaded shortly after launch. Because SimCity requires a constant online connection, many buyers were barely able to use the game, or could not play it at all.
Far more people logged in than we expected. More people played the game, in ways we never saw during the beta test.
Bradshaw also admitted that, in her words, it was “dumb” not to see the heavy traffic coming. EA and Maxis have therefore added extra server capacity in a short time and temporarily disabled several parts of the game to reduce the load on the systems.
As compensation, everyone who has activated SimCity will receive an email allowing them to download a free PC game. Players can choose one title from a selection on EA’s Origin platform. The full list is as follows:
To qualify for the offer, players had to register their copy of SimCity through Origin within the specified time period. EA announced the exact conditions and regional availability later on.
To play SimCity, the player must remain logged in online at all times. According to EA, this is partly intended to support the game’s online features, but critics point out that systems like this also function as DRM protection. A similar mandatory online connection had already caused major issues during the launch of Diablo III, when overloaded servers also prevented players from playing properly.
EA also announced that it would temporarily disable several SimCity features to make the game more stable and playable. Features such as leaderboards, achievements, and region filters were turned off for a while in order to reduce pressure on the servers.
In the United States, the publisher also temporarily suspended marketing for the game. Polygon reported this based on an internal EA email in which the company asked partners to stop actively showing advertisements for the game for the time being. That made it clear how seriously EA viewed the failed launch.
