SimCity. SimCity. SimCity? Ah, SimCity.

The game's developer, Maxis, issued a statement on Friday evening about the state of SimCity, and adopted an apologetic tone that would have probably benefited the company more had it done so earlier.

“So what went wrong?” said Maxis senior VP Lucy Bradshaw in a blog post. “The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta. OK, we agree, that was dumb, but we are committed to fixing it.”

An update posted yesterday said the server issues were progressing in the right direction.

“We’ve improved our server response time by 40x, we’ve doubled the number of players in the game at the same time and reduced server down times,” said Bradshaw. “The situation is good, but not good enough. And since my boss is one of the negatively affected (!) - we’re still driving hard to get everyone online, playing together, and no hitches.”

Maxis extended an olive branch to its angered community with promise of a free Electronic Arts-produced game. Players should receive an email about redeeming that on March 18.

The studio has also pushed back on the criticism against its publisher.

“Hey, this is on Maxis,” said the company in a response on Twitter. “EA does not force design upon us. We own it, we are working 24/7 to fix it, and we are making progress.”

The improvements are ongoing, and keep us updated about your experience in the comments.

About time

Good that they've apologised and taken responsibility. Other than, y'know, an adequate service, you can't ask more than that.

I hope they take take of all the customers that have been waiting for them to fix this, and not just the justifiably vocal ones.

If they honestly designed this game without influence from EA, then you have to question what the hell they were thinking. They spent too much time mucking around with free to play and Facebook games if they think this is what people wanted from a SimCity game.

Though more likely that's complete BS. I imagine some EA exec didn't walk over and say "make this always online and filled with DLC," but they at the least knew where the wind was blowing at the company.

The free game should be SimCity 4. That'll free up the servers.

@reelife said:

Perfect xD

God this game has stolen the last week of my life. I could care less about a free game, I've gotten my monies worth already.

Well, you could ask for a game that cost you $60 to work upon being installed on launch day, but...

@scaramoosh: You are lying. Cheetah Speed is not enabled, there are no leaderboards, and you cannot search regions by friends. Those are not case by case things, they are true for everyone.

lol

Well I've played 6+ hours over the weekend so It's all good now, server wise, but the game has other issues not server related. But I'll end up playing some more.

That free game would console me a little bit....

“The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta"

NO FUCKING SHIT. What did you expect?

I don't even have the game, but I just love how this whole thing has imploded. I hope they do fix the problems for the people who bought the games' sake, but seriously, how did you not see this happening? We're talking about SimCity here. That's HUGE.

Still haven't picked this game up and very happy with that decision.

@ssully: Well I've been playing over the weekend and cheetah speed is back in also achievements are back.... I don't know about the rest but those features have been working for me..

...PC gaming, right?

@ssully: Oh no, how will I live without these features for the time being... they aren't vital to the game. I easily invited a friend, I don't care about leader boards, I didn't even know there were any. I always play the fastest speed as Llama anyways so I'm not too bothered about Cheetah.

It isn't like they wont be patched back in, they were only taken out as a temporary measure and none of them were that important. I've said I hope they add a proper region browser and filters anyways.

It's a great base game, I'm having loads of fun and like I said, they just need to keep up with the development on it.

....Shitty design, right?

Someone needs a hug.

@_phara0h_: I've been playing all day today, as far as I can tell Cheetah speed is no faster than Llama speed right now.

Still waiting till everything is perfect before I pick it up, a free game doesn't make up for a completely broken new one in my eyes too

yeah, It would be crazy to think that a Sims game would be popular {sarcasm}. Not my type of game but it's pretty lame to use the excuse that they didn't expect it to be so popular and that Maxis and EA couldn't afford to have enough resources ready to make it work.

@scaramoosh: For the record, I am also in love with this game. I think it's fantastic, and when I can get on to play, I literally lose track of time. But it is really shitty to act like the people complaining are assholes when most of the complaints are valid. Regardless of if you use those features or if they will come back, the fact of the matter is right now they are available and that is fucked. In a few weeks this will be out of my mind when playing the game, but for the time being it is severely fucked up.

Also Cheetah speed missing is a huge deal. Starting a city is a huge pain in the ass because it takes forever to wait for cash to come in on the other two speeds.

@_phara0h_: Maybe they are slowly putting it back in? I just got off a few hours ago and none of those were in for me still. You can put the speed up all the way, but it doesn't go any faster then the second tier(lama?) speed.

Yeah, how dare people complain about not being able to play a game they spent 60 dollars on. Just because you didn't experience any issues doesn't mean other people are just making this shit up. They bought the game, they should be able to play it. They shouldn't be punished because Maxis didn't plan accordingly, and they certainly shouldn't be attacked for rightfully complaining about a shitty situation.

This is the best thing to happen really. I hope battlefield 4 servers are a clusterfuck too. Might make other publishers think twice about always-on gaming. Cheers EA.

@scaramoosh: You should be able to play a game you bought (or any product for that matter) from the time THEY make it available. To essentially say 'you know what you're getting into' and 'don't buy it for the first week or two' 'till they get it sorted is unfair. They're the ones who didn't have the capacity/whatever to make it work properly, that's not the consumers fault. If they're willing to take money for the product on Day X, it should be working from Day X, period. Obviously no one's perfect, but if they're going to force people to have it connect to a server, they'd best expect to get some shit if their servers can't handle the load.

That free game will probably be something like Darkspore, heh.

Curious what the game will be, I think Syndicate would be a great pick since it's a fantastic game published by EA that not nearly enough people played.

This is why they should stop with the always online thing, the multiplayer sounds cool and interesting, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't be able to play offline especially with a game like this. I bet at least half the players don't even want to play online, so it would have softened the blow on their servers as well.

I was upset until they said they'd give me a free game. SimCity is working fine for me now, and I get a free game. I LIKE FREE GAMES

I'm utterly shocked that anyone would defend EA at this point. SimCity's launch has been a disaster. There's simply no excuse for it.

A single player game should not have a play limit based on number of players playing.

If it was a complaint from someone who had no idea about the online DRM, then yeah I'd agree with them, you should be able to play a game you've just bought. However all these complaints are coming from people who very well knew it was always online, they knew it would suffer like every MMO and Diablo 3 has done. Every single person here whining on knew about it, yet you're all trying to act hard done by. All you had to do was save yourself from buying it for a week, you didn't and so it's your own fault, though tbh I bet most people complaining haven't bought it but are just jumping on the hate wagon.

It's not idea, but it is how the designed the game, they haven't kept it a secret so fucking get over it and stop acting like kids. Do you know what I did when any MMO or Diablo 3 launched in the past, I even did the same with SimCity. I just waited a few days until the crazy server issues were sorted.

This is nothing new.

Wouldn't we all like Single Player? Yeah, however from what they've led us to believe, is the game runs like an MMO, where the content is on the server. So it's how they designed it, they are probably not trying to fog everyone off with this notion, so fucking get over it. I mean who doesn't have an internet connection now anyways? If you have the money for a PC to play this game, you have the internet.

I love how this reeks of "Hey guys these servers are down! Our Bosses are affected! It's pretty funny huh :D. OH BOY DID WE SCREW UP HAHAHAHA!"

Yeah they aren't downplaying how fucked this situation is at all.

Oh boy, a free copy of Mass Effect 1. I bet you're all super excited, especially the ones of you with the game already.

Agreed.

At last!

PC master race: you're the man now, dawg.

More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta

Shocking. I wonder if the limited beta access and 1 hour time limit had anything to do with that. Nah, too far fetched.

Very extreme example here, but... If a thief gets caught, and pays his dues to society, then steels again, is it not the thief's fault for stealing? or is it societies fault for letting him go?

People who bought this game are getting exactly what they deserve. Continuing to support these games with always-on DRM solutions implemented by companies with histories of atrocious customer service is only going to send the message that we as consumers have no rights.
But hey, who needs self control? Just buy everything you can (or can't) afford regardless of these issues.

@scaramoosh: I don't know why you're complaining. You obviously love everything about the game, so why are you here talking about it and not playing it?

Well Battlefield 4 should be online only, get rid of the single player and focus on the multiplayer. Didn't really have any issues with BF3 when it launched now that I think back to it, same with COD games on the xbox as well.

This all thing made me buy Cities XL 2012.

Kinda weird comment, considering as far as I know there is nothing comparable to GOG or GamersGate on consoles, letting you buy DRM free games where you can keep and make backups of your installer so you'll always be able to install the game again, on whatever machine you want.

If you bought any digital games on your Wii U, and your machine breaks, you're fucked. Similar, though not quite as short sighted policies are in use with Sony and Microsoft. There are several singleplayer games available on PSN and XBL that require you to be online to play them too - remember how Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 became impossible to play during the PSN outage two years ago? Far Cry 3 is also unplayable if either PSN or Uplay is down for maintenance, and I'm sure the same is true for the 360 version.

Maybe, I haven't had the chance to play the game yet so I can't really say much about the game design. Unless it's the always on connection that's shitty design, in which case that can extend to any number of games.

Well I've had the joy of my 12 hours of work now lost because I can't connect back to the server my cities are saved on .... That has probably been the most painful aspect of this whole thing