Maxis Apologizes for SimCity Launch Issues

PC gaming sure seems worth it, between always online DRM, games crashing and taking you back to the desktop à la Tomb Raider and having to constantly upgrade your rig.

There is literally no way they couldn't know this would happen in advance. Their apology rings hollow. Go fuck yourself EA.

From what I've been seeing, it seems like it's a little bit of both. It's just a clusterfuck all the way around.

It's sad because Maxis is usually really good about stuff like this.

Haha, this is a pretty good point.

I'm just getting prepared to get even angrier when the free game turns out to be trash.

Its strange that i actively want a game to fail but this thing represents something i really dislike

I'm betting the free game will be MOH: Warfighter or Aliens: Colonial Marines. That way they can tell their shareholders what resounding success' they have been.

Enjoy that copy of Need For Speed: Most Wanted or MySims!

@smilingpig: From what i've seen, that game is an utter pile of cartilage.

The launch has been a clusterfuck, but given that fact, they've done a decent job of speaking to the community otherwise - certainly far better than Blizzard did with Diablo 3.

We've gotten a couple of messages from the head of Maxis about exactly what is going on; they've actually admitted that the problem isn't just unfortunate - it's a "dumb" mistake on their part; and they've tried to make recompense with a free game. Short of a flawlessly working game, they've worked this situation about as best as they can.

The servers (at least for me), have been far more stable the past few days. I've been able to get in and play as much as I want, though the region connectivity still hasn't functioned 100% of the time during those sessions. When this game works, it's still a fantastic experience - the small city sizes are a bummer (though they've stated they will increase the size at a later date), but this limitation has led me to think a lot more about how I use every square inch of terrain, and how to maximize density -- instead of just an endless urban sprawl. You can still build a city with a population of 200 or 300k+ people, but it requires your layout to be far more thoughtful, instead of just big.

This has probably been the worst single-player product launch in history (some MMOs have had worse launches, and for a lot longer, but that seems to be almost expected with them), but it has gotten a lot better. We are entitled to better as paying customers, but what was done, was done. Now we can only judge them by how they respond to their mistake, and I think they've done a decent job in that department.

EDIT: And as I wrote this, another SimCity developer posted an update on the server issues on the SimCity website. You have to give them credit for how much they've kept the community informed about what is going on, through this. Blizzard were completely silent by comparison.

Well, that's nice of them. It's also nice that EA are giving people who are on the fence about buying SimCity enough time to be persuaded by the "free" game that will be offered. I'm one of those guys on the fence, but I'd rather have a stable, enjoyable game than some offering I'm likely not interested in.

My friends seem to enjoy the game, at least, so there's that.

Giving a free game...don't do that. It doesn't solve the issues even if it 'pacifies' some of the user base. At least for me it just makes me feel cheap. I appreciate the percieved sincerity. If so it's a tough spot to be in. I hope the server problems are solved soon, some hints it hasn't been an easy fix for some reason.

So, the beta was basically useless, they didn't expect many people to play the game and EA had nothing to do with any of this. Got it!

I feel sorry for Maxis.

Also, gotta love where PC gaming is going.

Y'know, I think it's disgusting to see the community turn inward and blame each other for problems like this. To tell us that we should have known it would go this way because we saw what happened with Diablo 3, because we know what kind of company EA is, we know how things like this work.

That's bullshit. That shouldn't be our problem. They offered us a service. We paid for the service. If the service doesn't work in the way and at the time they said it would, we have a right to complain.

In any case, it's nice to see them at least making an effort to smooth things over with their customers.

I don't care about games being "always-on" - my issue is with how the two big examples of it (Diablo 3 and SimCity), haven't been able to make "always-on" a seamless experience... at least at first.

If you're going to force your game to be online to work, then you better make sure you have the capacity and redundancy to handle it. That's all I ask.

I don't understand people who make "always-online" a principled battle, but will gladly bend over for Steam and their "games you own but don't really own" service, for example. Just make sure it works out of the gate.

Word.

@scaramoosh: I completely agree about whining online, it helps nothing and it's annoying! But as beneficial your foresight has been for you I don't think its fair to say that the consumer should know better.

If EA say a game is coming out on a certain day it should be playable on a certain day. Nobody is forcing them to release on that day and they should ensure that the product they are selling will work. In my mind the whole issue would be sorted if EA had marketed the launch as "SimCity Launch week", they can explain that with a potential huge influx of players they wanted to make people aware it may take a week or so for the game to work perfectly. But they didn't, they marketed it for launch on a certain day and it was broken.

For every 1 of us on giantbomb who could foresee the launch problems there will be some poor guy sat at home who doesn't know about video games but wants to build a city and doesn't know why he cant. It's not enough to assume that consumer will wait a bit so servers sort themselves out.

EA is truly scum.

EA IS LITERALLY WORSE THAN HITLER

“EA does not force design upon us."

Loving every laugh.

With the amount of injected marketers, disingenuous LGBT support to divert the negative reception, running the risk of getting your Origin account banned upon forcing a refund, and all the drawbacks in comparison to prior SimCity entries as well as forced online, this whole thing has been a constant catalyst to chowing popcorn and enjoying the frenzy - not at the consumer's expense, mind you.

Thing is, I'm willing to give EA the benefit of the doubt on this. Because clearly it's not in their interest for the launch to be an unmitigated clusterfuck. EA is not in the business of self-sabotage.

They fucked up, but it's not because they're evil. It's because they fucked up.

Yeah, the whole always-online thing is dumb. They should at least be able to run an offline version that merely checks-in online and doesn't revolve around a constant connection to actually function as a game. But it's not evil. EA are not evil. They've just made a bunch of bad business decisions that have repeatedly adversely affected their customers and hurt their reputation. Nobody at EA is sitting in a plush chair laughing "Haha! We ruined SimCity! Those fucking idiots still bought it! Woo HOO WE'RE RICH FOREVER!"

Or they could be, I don't know.

Yes, video game companies are truly scum.

You always hear about companies underestimating server load. It would be smarter, albeit more costly, to overestimate what the server load would be and then adjust accordingly from there.

@artisanbreads: I do not recall him saying "video game companies". EA is a publisher and is not interested in good business.

@gildermershina said:

I would totally watch a sitcom about EA trying to destroy the world with video games.

I hope Origin crashes when everybody gets on to download their free game.

Yeah I'm sure they aren't interested in making money. And relative to everything going on, a video company is deserving of the scum label.

There's honestly no excuse for this. A company the size of EA has the manpower and resources to nail a launch like this. Take the most optimistic pie in the sky number for server load and triple it. Have more capacity than physically possible to overload. Take a hit on the server costs and adjust downward once the numbers shake out. Seems like a sound investment.

Instead, apply EA logic and cut every corner possible, run juuuust enough servers to barely keep the game afloat. Generate a massive amount of negative feedback. Piss off the press and the customers. Invalidate your design philosophy and tarnish the name of a beloved franchise. Amazing work, guys.

@artisanbreads: If you bought this game, you'd be saying otherwise. There are ways to fulfill a quarter without skimping and being deceptive.

"Scum" isn't exclusive terminology, and my post below provides enough reasoning to believe EA is as such.

@scaramoosh: Are you honestly upset about people being upset that their game isn't playable on release cause it is the standard with online games? I think it is more than reasonable to expect that the product you buy is going to work when it is for sale, and it is good that people are outraged. They should be. Big companies need to be told that they cannot do this to their customers.

That aside, game is alot of fun for me. Just wish someone would join my region someday so I can check that out. Also, I dunno if it is DRM-related, but there is alot of buggy behavior with wastedisposal, half of the time my trucks aint going to pick it up, and that also affects recycling-trucks.

Yes their plan was to get you to buy the game and never have it working. You fell into their trap.

Also, I wait to see how online games fair in the market when they release before I buy them. Do homework. I already didn't like how it was multi focused and now I know not to buy this game. It works out.

@scaramoosh: Yeah! Everyone got the email saying, "Hey guys Maxis here. We plan on taking your money and then having the servers be completely broken for a week while we try and fix shit we saw coming. Hope to see you playing in a week after we turn off features to the game cause we apparently have no network devs or we just don't give a fuck cause we already got your money and this will get people talking about this."

As a point of comparison, when the whole Diablo 3 debacle was going on, would you have been able to ask for a refund from Blizzard or not?

Been able to play ever since Saturday now. Its funny, I bought Diablo 3 too and was disappointed in the game, even after the server issues went away I was still left with a game I didn't really like. So far I enjoy Simcity more than D3 so I don't feel mad at them for screwing things up to start with(as long as they keep it running smoothly now). But a free game from them plus the fact that I got $20 credit on Amazon for pre-ordering makes it almost like I got Simcity for free, so I can't really complain.

Please, continue being facetious. I'm providing you levelheaded retorts and all you continue to do is be condescending.

I myself didn't buy the game, by the way. Always online and dirty dealings I don't tend to condone. In turn, this ended up being a much bigger catastrophe than predicted.

So wait, are you trying to jab PC gaming because one game is having server issues? Yeah because console games never, ever have server outages. Right.

and all I have to do is look at my PS3 and remember when PSN was dead for over a month, affecting a multitude of games and virtually killing any online community Mortal Kombat had a chance in gaining.

@jackg100: I bet most the complaints come from people who haven't bought the game, they just hate EA. Then I bet the other complainers are people who knew it was going to be an issue at launch, however decided to act surprised and complain about it anyways.

The servers were borked for a few days, so what? They were with any MMO launch, I remember a COD having problems with one launch, Diablo 3 had problems etc etc.

Making software is hard, building the server infrastructure around it to cope with the amounts of people on day one is hard to. This will continue to happen, people need to fucking get over it and prepare for it. If say WoW 2 comes out and you don't want to deal with the issues of borked servers for the first week, don't buy it until they have them sorted. Don't buy the game knowing full well it's online only and then complain about it, especially when it's happened before, many times.

The world isn't a perfect place, nor are people, mistakes happen, companies cannot just throw money at problems or they wouldn't make profit. It takes time, reasoning and reaction a lot of the time to these situations.

Yeah it's not a good situation and it isn't fun to have the servers playing up, however there has been a complete over reaction to the situation. I can only assume it's because people hate EA and this gives them even more reason to. No one down rated Diablo 3 for it's issues and in MMOs reviewers wait a month before posting the review. I don't get why reviewers didn't just give a warning out and wait until things stabilized before the review. It would be quite easy to say on your site... "don't buy this product atm, it's broken at this time, the review will come when the issues are fix and the game is playable again".

Reviews like Gamespot's just seem rather bizarre to me, especially seeing as most of the points Kevin has made are redundant already as the servers are much smoother.

Cue Maxis taking 100% of the blame for EA's incompetence and bad decisions, getting shut down and the remains being integrated into some social/phone/tablet/F2P hellhole.

I haven't upgraded my rig in 2 years, I can still run the likes of Witcher 2 and BF3 maxed at 60 FPS at 1920x1080. (and the majority of my PC is from 2009, only the graphics card was updated in v.late 2010)

Let's write off PC gaming because one game took someone back to the desktop once, oh no!

Funny how the misinformed cretins come out with pitchforks to try and kick PC gaming when they believe it's down, for whatever asinine reason.

What do you actually get out of such comments? I sure am glad I'm neutral to platforms, y'all just sound like whiny, bitter dweebs.

@slyspider: This statement is just total bollox. There was lots of warning about the always online DRM, any one who plays games knows to expect server issues for the first few days in an online game. Not so much with say an FPS because lots of companies sell servers to the players and they're not all in house. Also because Sim City runs a lot of the simulation server side (apparently) so there was always going to be a much bigger toll on the servers, similar to how Diablo 3 or MMOs are made.

Also 3 non vital features were turned off that barely have any impact on the gameplay and they will be reintroduced once they're confident in the server performance.

It's hardly like they turned off the city building or anything worth crying over.

Maybe the beta test should have been real. Not one day and limiting ppl to 1 hour on a city.

@scaramoosh said:

But they did, everywhere but in a few small squares.

This has nothing to do with DRM. This is a server load issue. The DRM starts and ends at authentication, which I never had a problem with since Day 1 of the this games launch. Bringing up the launcher and authenticating has worked fine (for me). It was getting the servers to load up ANYTHIGN past that point where it completely broke. At the heart of this is the decision to design this game in such a way that you need to always be online to make it work. This is more like a Sim-City MMO than anything. I imagine if they marketed it in that way people would be a lot more forgiving of server load issues since it's totally expected at the launch of an MMO.

@reelife: That's exactly the same thing that came to my mind too. XD

Yeah dude, BF3/Battlelog runs like a charm.

Yeah, it's really vital you keep upgrading your PC to keep on par with 7 year old consoles. And that nasty problem with PC parts just falling apart after a year of use or so. Dang, it just really sucks how you can't play games at all on PC unless you're upgrading every year to stay at the top of the line.

In case you couldn't tell I'm being facetious and you're an idiot.