The launch week of Electronic Arts" revamped SimCity franchise has been an unmitigated disaster. The decision to force gamers to have an "always on" internet connection to play a game that in previous versions could be played without one has resulted in many gamers not being able to play due to server overloads and issues on EA"s end.
Late on Friday, EA"s general manager of the Maxis brand, Lucy Bradshaw, posted up a note on EA"s blog site that announced that on March 18th, SimCity players would receive a code to download a free EA game. She added, "I know that’s a little contrived – kind of like buying a present for a friend after you did something crummy. But we feel bad about what happened. We’re hoping you won’t stay mad and that we’ll be friends again when SimCity is running at 100 percent."
Bradshaw also said that problems with the launch of SimCity were simply due to unexpected demand for playing the game. While EA held two online beta tests prior to the launch, Bradshaw said, "More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta." EA claims to have added 120 percent more server capacity to the game since the launch but Bradshaw admitted that the service is still "not quite there" in terms of serving everyone.
Source: EA | Image via EA