This was tweeted out by longtime Maxis designer Guillaume Pierre.

It seems like this will not effect the Sims franchise, but I guess we'll have to say farewell to SimCity for a while at least.

It's so incredibly shitty of EA to pull this during GDC.

Goddamn EA!

Lots of history behind this one. They lasted a long time.

Can't be too mad at EA since they pretty much saved Maxis from bankruptcy in the first place and Maxis' biggest successes happened while being part of EA.

Well, shit.

That's what happens when you make shit games

Who is going to make all 47 expansion packs for The Sims 4 now?

Maxis has been dead since Will Wright left. It's just getting its ventilator shut off and feeding tube removed.

It's sad, but this is similar to the LucasArts situation where it mostly feels like they're being put out of their misery. The fact is, Maxis died when Will Wright left.

Clearly there were still a lot of talented people working there though, I hope everyone lands on their feet.

@mb: The Sims Studio will apparently continue to work on The Sims.

I really loved Maxis games, the original Sims was a huge time sink, as well as Sim City 2000. But, unfortunately, the recent Sim City game and Sims 4 were not great games. I have no idea if the faults in those games, including the disastrous online requirement for Sim City, were pushed on Maxis by EA or not, but still those games were a shadow of what they could and should have been.

Not much news about this at the moment, but I assume we will be hearing more about this soon. It does stink when a studio with a storied history closes. At the same time, their output has been subpar as of late, so a closure isn't entirely a surprise. It is too bad though.

Turns out when you put out 3 bad games in a row there's repurcussions.

@conmulligan said:

Nailed it. This is super gross.

Maxis isn't the Maxis we know and love from the days o' yore (not that it matters, it always sucks when a studio is shut down), but man... "Maxis is shutting down" is a sad set of words either way.

Super sad to see anyone loose their job. Wish them luck in the future!

How is it shitty or gross?

Sad. Maxis was a premium developer for a good period of time.

@zombie2011 said:

Laying people off during industry events is a transparent attempt to avoid bad press. It's doubly shitty to do so during GDC, where networking is part of the appeal; if Maxis' employees had known ahead of time that they were going to be out of work, they could have made plans to attend and look for another position.

And they are also very likely the reason they're shutting down. "Ruining SimCity in a dozen different ways and filling it with unnecessary online components" comes to mind. Same can be said for the newest Sims, adding their total lack of promotion for it.

It's not all of Maxis. Just Maxis Emeryville. Two other Maxis studios still exist and are creating video games.

While EA was probably pushing the game in a certain direction, it was still the onus of the developer to make the experience, whatever it may be, a fun one. You really can't blame everything on EA as if the people actually making those games weren't present.

Man, it had been a long while since they put out a great game, but its still really sad. I used to love various versions of SimCity, and I remember watching my dad getting way into SimAnt back in the day.

Fuuuuck. Talk about a bummer. I don't really like seeing any developer close up shop, but I feel like it stings just a tad bit more when it's one that's been around for ages even if it's just been in name only. Pour another one out for a fallen OG of the industry, son!

I guess? At least maybe they can get out there and mix it up.

Yeah I think it's silly to try to place blame in that situation without something more to go off of.

I wonder how much this had to do with the last Sim City. Jeff's amazing rant during the 2013 GotY podcasts about the game sums up how disappointing it was.

I hate to be that guy, but what is Maxis anymore but just a name pumping out by-committee games designed to appeal to the largest common denominator and make money off dumb micro-transactions for digital couches? The Sims was awesome. Sims 2? Pretty okay. Hell, I even liked Spore. That game had some balls and tried for some amazing things. Everything after that is just a grab for cash.

@finaldasa: You're right, but I was under the impression that those "other Maxis studios" were mainly mobile and expansion pack workhouses. Kotaku have put up a statement from EA however:

Today we are consolidating Maxis IP development to our studios in Redwood Shores, Salt Lake City, Helsinki and Melbourne locations as we close our Emeryville location. Maxis continues to support and develop new experiences for current Sims and SimCity players, while expanding our franchises to new platforms and developing new cross-platform IP.

These changes do not impact our plans for The Sims. Players will continue to see rich new experiences in The Sims 4, with our first expansion pack coming soon along with a full slate of additional updates and content in the pipeline.

All employees impacted by the changes today will be given opportunities to explore other positions within the Maxis studios and throughout EA. For those that are leaving the company, we are working to ensure the best possible transition with separation packages and career assistance.

Heck, I had no idea that EA had a presence here in Helsinki.

Man......

I think it's pretty easy to look at a lot of EA's published games, taking into account all the excessive online components, microtransactions, and the trend of game studios they purchase suddenly steering their games away from what people originally liked about them, and attribute those things to EA's influence. Yes, Maxis always had ridiculous amounts of expansions, but they never required you to be online all the time or to have friends to connect to in order to actually have success in a game (SimCity).

@isomeri: Redwood Shores is the Sims developer, the rest they mention (I think) are just EA satellite studios and I'm not sure what they make.

I'd rather have seen a refocus on the product rather than an entire studio closure, but the Maxis I know I loved when I was a kid is long gone. Hopefully those great games inspire other developers to make something similar down the line.

Except he probably didn't. It was Maxis Emeryville only.

I always find it weird when you hear about these type of stories during a busy news week like GDC & Pax East. Most likely then not it's to drown the story in all the other big announcements coming out this week from those events.

@deadpan: Riiiight. The developers of one of their most successful games of last year. Some day, I'm sure Bioware is headed for the same fate, but I think they averted the appearance they were headed there with DA:I.

I feel bad for people losing their jobs. That is just a given, it is rough when people lose their jobs. But for me it not a "oh, what will be lost? Oh what a tragedy for this company to fold" issue. Maxis made it bed when THEY, not EA, ...but they did it.

If SImCity wasn't such a bullocks festival if lies, deceit and more lies the closing of the studio would be at a different level. But Maxis lied:

- "The game HAS to be online or it just won't work...it is baked in".....well, nope, we did in fact lie about that.

- "The cities can't be bigger, it just the way we designed it"....Well, they can be a bit bigger for sure.

- "Oh it hard to change this game because our system is actually simulating people going to work, cars driving virtual residents, and delivery trucks and sanitations trucks doing their simulated rounds"....Well, okay you caught us lying again, some hackers changed the values on those things and PROVED that was a lie because the game was fudging results to look like a simulation without crunching any numbers.

I mean come on!!! That wasn't EA marching out those lies, that was the executives and community managers at Maxis itself. Does that mean a Jr. Art designer deserve to lose his jobs? NOPE! Nobody deserves anything except a slap on the wrist and a 'come on think before you speak and don't lie to us please'. But in the long run a business that was to the point of lying to customers about 'easily discovered processes in games' was damaged on the inside....once it is common and logical to lie to your customers you might as well pack-it-in. For whatever reason Maxis closes there was something wrong in the hierarchy of decision makers at that company. It would have been better to fix it, because it would have been great for the lower level people (who didn't decided to lie) to keep their jobs. Nevertheless, a damaged institution is damaged...it was fix it or fold it. They folded it for whatever reason, and it is done and that is sad.

Whatever their model for selling kind of sucked. I might have enjoyed Sims game now and then but all those expansions make it un-purchasable without a haunting feeling that I am missing something good. Well anyway its best if EA just sells their profitable parts to independent investors and lets go of its umbrella altogether, god knows there is no synergy in what they are doing. I guess video games are too young for competition laws to come in and bust some ass.

It always sucks when people lose their jobs.

Kinda weird how this happens mere days before Cities: Skylines is released, a game more or less made as an answer to the complaints SimCity got. They even took a stab at SimCity when announcing the price on twitter.