Cant wait to get my hands on Skylines =D (Also Cities XL and XXL have NOTHING to do with Cities: Skylines, two completely different companies. In case someone was confused about this)

@rirse:

These types of comments are incredibly thoughtless. This is an intensely unstable industry and it is almost unheard of for any developer to last 25 years like this Maxis studio did. This is not a reflection of EA so much as a reflection on how this industry operates. Every major publisher has shut down developers and also opened new developers to replace them.

Yet EA always does shuts its studios down after one or two crummy games, could you defend EA any harder. There's a reason why EA has a bad reputation, more-so than any publisher, and it's related to the way the handle their business models and studios. There is a consistency that stinks.

Well, that's a bummer.

Hate to hear this. I personally enjoy the new SimCity a great deal but I also waited and came to the party a bit late, bypassing all the of the trouble that earned it it's reputation (and rightfully so). Any time I see another name I remember from the time my dad brought home a crappy 486/66 from work shutting down makes for a sad day..

End of an era indeed.

Maxis was one of the few classic studios still around. I know people like to hate on EA or SimCity 4, but still... I just hope the people there can transition to other places.

I'll echo what others have said: if I was a decision maker at EA I'd probably have made a similar decision. It's been a long time since a truly great Maxis title, and they aren't making small scale projects. I'm sure EA had some questionable ideas about what they wanted from SimCity, but Maxis still made that game. When you have a football coach that loses games for years and years you fire them. Hard for me to hate EA too much for this. Maybe for other things, but not for this.

@jesterpc238: Except that EA is the coach and instead of being fired he fired the entire team.

Well said Alex. Sad day.

Man, that list seriously hurts to read. So many good studios there that produced some great games. Criterion and Pandemic are the two that hit home for me. Criterion, in between making a pair of fantastic Burnout games, decided to try their hand at an FPS with Black, and it turned out badass. So EA decided that franchise obviously wasn't worth continuing, nor was the Burnout franchise. Clearly Criterion should be tasked with making progressively worse and increasingly stale NFS games instead. Meanwhile, Pandemic produces Battlefront and Mercenaries, two great games. EA picks them up, and the first game afterwards is the wildly disappointing World in Flames (which I refuse to refer to as a "sequel" to a game it doesn't hold a candle to), which immediately kills the franchise. Smart money is on the new Battlefront doing the exact same thing. And that's just the two studios that hit me hardest; the others are much the same.

The "fuck EA" sentiments have reached near-wearisome levels, and I generally play devil's advocate a bit when everyone piles on something, but fuck EA. This pattern or ruination is indefensible, and they deserve every bit of this scorn. Previously great games/franchises are either flat-out abandoned or die a slow, painful death at the hands of EA meddling with what made them great in the first place. The one saving grace of all this is that I imagine (maybe just hope) that in most of these cases, the devs got a big payday when EA acquired their studios and thus got rewarded for previously great work before it all went to shit. If that's not the case, please don't tell me. Let me at least believe these guys cashed in, flipped EA the bird the first time EA tried to micromanage them, and are drinking mojitos on a beach somewhere right now. The flushed goldfish are all swimming happily in the ocean. Right? Right? :(

Well i think EA is the blame for the company downfall.

Honestly, when was the last time Maxis actually released a good game. Sims 4, Spore, Darkspore, Sim City. All lackluster and disappointing. Was it Sims 2? Which came out over a decade ago. Its been years since that studio did anything of worth and the Maxis of legend has been gone for a very long time, I don't actually blame EA for putting it down. Their franchises, regardless of the fact they were created by Maxis, are probably in safer hands elsewhere. It sucks for the employees, but that's business. If you suck at what your supposed to do for years and multiple releases, your gonna get shut down. Thats just the nature of the beast in any business.

Despite some of their questionable ideas, probably forced upon them by EA, their games always had a quality to them.

EA manages it's properties so poorly. They focus on hitting the mass market with quick gains, but so often burn down studios in the process. What a shit show.

very sad news. i'm sure there's plenty of blame to go around (EA, design decisions, market realities, etc.), but a titan has fallen. here's hoping everyone lands on their feet.

Serious question: Has any studio made better games after being bought by EA?

If not for Maxis games I wouldn't be on this site. They were largely what got me into videogames. Sim Copter, tower, the various city games and don't forget Ant! I'm currently playing Sim City 4 and it's a delight!

This is a tragedy, I know the Maxis of the last few years wasn't the same Maxis that made all those hits, but it will always represent some of the best games ever.

@notnert427: Bioware? They made more mainstream games after being bought but objectively Mass Effect 2 is the best game they ever made.

Criterion made Burnout Paradise under EA as well.

You've never played their debut game Shattered Steel I take it.

I guess thinking back a little, beyond SimCity 2000 all my favorite Maxis games were titles that they just published or localized by other developers, like SimTower (by OpenBook) and SimIsle (by Intelligent Games)

@jambowned said:

Someone needs to make a meme with this scene from Breaking Bad.

This is a shame, they made some incredibly addictive games. I put tons and tons of hours into the original SimCity and the Sims & Sims 3.

Never Forget

O well things happen Maxis just pretty much disappointed everyone I know with the simcity 4 and those people including me didn't buy it. Hell if it was of the same quality of simcity 3 then they would have easily had 4 sales just from me but sadly no Always on-line DRM killed that off.

RIP Maxis and I dont mean Peace i mean Rest In Pieces.

Though hopefully the people that have been laid off find other work.

In EA's defense – I can't believe I just typed that – it wouldn't have been able to shut down those developers had other people not chosen to sell their companies. You can argue that the developers who sold did so in order to secure funding, but that means EA's financial-driven closure of them is no better or worse than the dev's original financial-driven decision to sell.

I was hoping they would give SimCity another go with the feedback they received from their recent reboot. It had a lot of good ideas, just some of them were poorly executed.

I thought The Sims franchise was still handled by the spin off studio The Sims Studio but apparently they reintegrated back into Maxis before The Sims 4. I guess 4 must not have done very well because even with the blow-back from SimCity I would have figured The Sims money would have kept them going for a while. Maybe the mobile market has decayed their demographic. The first expansion is apparently due out next month and they tend to put out Sims expansions every 6 months. I wonder how this will affect that kind of schedule.

The studio doesn't seem like it has been the same since Will Wright left but man. Nearly a three decade run and owned by EA for two of those decades, which is a better record than any other EA acquisition. I thought the user interface for the last SimCity was incredibly well done, if it wasn't for the online and city size issues it could have been amazing.

This is a bummer.

Also, before anyone goes crazy, Bioware is making nutso money off of The Old Republic. They might get cut down to size, but they're not going anywhere.

Bummer, again not surprising. Sad that the last Simcity we saw from Maxis was hot garbage.

I can see your view. I can also see the first few companies thinking it was going to be so awesome to have this juggernaut behind them to really help them shine.

At this point, I have no sympathy for anyone who takes EA's money. You make a deal with the devil, you can't be surprised when he comes to collect.

Honestly, this article is a little miss leading. The studio isn't so much shutting down as it is being moved. Employees were given the choice to come with, go to somewhere else in EA or leave the company. Those who chose the last option were given severance pays.

So yeah, not as evil as this may make it appear.

This is whats up.......................,,,,,, cities skyline.............. cities skyline ..................... is better then trash ass simcity reboot

There goes all of my dreams of a new SimGolf.

I....I gotta find my Sim City 2000 and Sim Tower disks. I need to hug them.

Maxis developed Simcity 4. EA is just paying the bills. The game was terrible, and it didnt pay off. Maxis test their games before release?

can everyone stop saying sim city 4? that was the one before the latest which was simcity and general consensus is that it was a good'un.

huh, really? i know they indicated on the bombcast that it was sort of self-sustaining now but didn't think it was profitable. but i guess it failing was a blessing as it happened right around the F2P boom.

I just wanted another simcity game that didn't try to cater to everyone. simcity is still one of my favorite games of all time, and I have fond memories of it (like me and my brother checking each others towns in simcity 2000).

This sucks. Hopefully they can find work.

But lets stop pretending that Maxis has been great the last few years. SimCity 2013 was a disaster, a step back in the series and Sims 4 was dlc'ed to hell. Maxis went down hill after Will Right left.

So what was your source for this comment then? This article?

It seems to me that you just regurgitated exactly what Alex posted with the misconception that they were moving the company. The article says clearly that the responsibilities of Maxis will be distributed to other studios. This does not mean that Maxis is getting "moved". It means, as the article suggests, that Maxis is getting shut down permanently.

I'm just not sure where you think EA is being portrayed as evil here? I think the sentiment "It's just business" applies here.

The article, especially the title, implies that the entire Maxis studio is being shut down, which is not the case. It even say so right in the press release. They are consolidating, e.g. moving stuff in-house. The Maxis brand still exists, along with employees who choose to go with the company.

From the press release:

"All employees impacted by the changes today will be given opportunities to explore other positions within the Maxis studios and throughout EA."

The way the article is written along with the title of the article makes it appear as if though the entire Maxis studio is being shuttered, which is clearly not the case. It is being consolidated. There's a big difference between the two.

A shame - but kinda had it coming after "Sim City" - if that is what they offered then I wouldn't trow money at them either..

I hate to see it go, I was really pulling for a new SimFarm game. Seriously, that game was great back in the day, and may be my favorite Maxis game of all time! I know there are lots of farming sims now but SimFarm was a perfect balance of simulation and fun. Hopefully someone will create a spiritual successor to SimFarm like Petroglyph did with Grey Goo.

Apparently, this opens my eyes into flaws of Spore, and you know, when EA Shuts down Maxis, the only reason it keep open Maxis Branches is: to work on the Sims, as long as Maxis Branches aren't renamed into the Sims Studios, Maxis is only as dead as Tony Stark. and Post Will Wright Maxis is like Post Yasser Arafat Fatah(only Post Yasser Arafat Fatah forces anyone that pay tribute to Gaza Strip and Palestinians put their bet on HAMAS)