Maxis Apologizes for SimCity Launch Issues

See, this is how you apologize.

Admit your mistake, take responsibility, then work to fix it and do something for inconvenience.

Yet, people still aren't happy.

'pologize

But keep refusing to offer refunds for a non-functioning game that the user is in no way responsible for the game not working though.

The only way to apologize is to remove the DRM.

What happens when they pull down the servers for this in 2-3 years?

The calculation aren't actually done on the server. You can play the game for time after being disconnected, and the server just essentially syncs to your game. I don't doubt it would take a lot of restructuring to make it an offline game, but it's not like Diablo 3 where literally everything is done server-side.

That's not Maxis, though, that's EA.

2 things:

A) Monster Hunter for the PS2 was released in 2004, the servers in Japan are still up to this day. I think if that can survive, so can SimCity.

2) You're assuming that when the servers do go down for this, people won't have moved on to the sequel.

@likeassur: Maxis is EA.

Apologize to my opened copy that Amazon is giving me a full refund for!

@giovanni: .....Really?

EA is the parent company. Any issues regarding refunds, billing, etc. goes to their customer support, not Maxis'. Maxis doesn't even have customer support.

I need someone to point out to me where in this statement they apologize, because I'm not seeing it.

Have not touched it since launch day. I'm too worried I'll lose progress, plus I haven't even been able to log on the few times I've tried. Such a shame, I love the game!

What I liked about my old simcity games was that it didn't rely on a server, I relied on me having a system that either gave me middle to high performance of it. So I feel for those who had poor experiences with this. I won't be there for the bad or good times or at least the current times.

This was my impression from how the game works--which is, by the way, different from what was originally explained by the dev team. If the calculations aren't done on the server, then they've been very misleading about what the servers actually are doing. I didn't want to be categorical about it because, well, I'm not on the team that built the game. But from the way the game actually functions, it doesn't seem like it would be difficult to patch the game to work from locally-saved data.

Just so we all have this straight.....everything about the game is being worked on except for the one problem that is holding it back. Always online, with cities that are locked away on servers that will inevitably be turned off someday.

I can't think of anything better than a functioning offline single player experience. Please give me that in lieu of this free PC game....

Having wrong expectations on how many people will play is understandable from a business perspective, but it's no longer valid. This simply happens too many times for it to still be a logical fault. It happens every single time.

If you are going to force people to be online to play your game, you better be sure to invest in servers to support it. You make your expectations on what server capacity you need, then triple it to be safe. Makes no sense business wise, but I strongly believe this is just unacceptable. Apology means little when you show you have no interest in ever learning from the mistakes made in the gaming industry.

The only thing this shows to me, is the next time a always online game comes around, they'll just plan an apology ahead along with a free game that they can lose, rather than spend money on servers to make sure the game works.

don't care EA not touching this game for one I don't have a always on internet connection.

Secondly when you can change the way the game plays without any consent at all on my part that i don't like.

thirdly when you launch you new simcity in a few years im fairly sure you will turn off the servers for this one I don't like renting games especially games that should have a offline single player in the first place.

Guess I will stick to simcity 4 you cant turn of the servers for that and make it worthless.

No, I literally just posted the first random thing to pop into my head.

Internet. Explained.

Oo look I still have my copy of Sim City for the SNES, great thing about these old games is that it still works, will still work, will forever work till it breaks. The issue with this Sim City is that servers don't last forever, so one day this game will no longer work, will stop working, will have an end. The Clock is ticking away.

Well I got back to my original server, played a bunch of it, got it to 70,000 citizens, then got frustrated and destroyed my city with meteors.

I guess I'm having SOME meteor remorse now. But what's done is done.

"Sorry 'bout that launch, we're not too good with math and stuff. We heard you like SimCity, here have a free copy of some Need for Speed or FIFA game!"

I would sooner accept some rebate on my $60 purchase than a free game. As an adult gamer if I wanted some other game I probably already have it. They'll either try to give me something I already have or something I don't necessarily want. The gesture is appreciated but their mechanism to quell frustration with the launch is misplaced. The overwhelming majority of rationale customers, many of whom have said so publicly, are telling EA and Maxis how to make it right. Make the game playable offline.

Sticking with SC3KU. I doubt this one runs on Wine anyway

I'm really getting tired of hearing this excuse "...a lot more people logged on than we expected." Remember when this happened with the Call of Duty Elite program? Seriously, these companies spend a fortune on advertising for a highly anticipated game, and when their product falls on its face. They throw out this lame excuse. *sigh*

Free game=Big Rigs reboot.

@bunny_fire: That's a good point. Stuff like this is essentially long-term rental. There might be some companies that handle it well and remove the DRM before shutting their servers down so that people can continue playing.

We just know EA isn't one of those companies.

They should apologize for the entire game! Sim City isn't the game they are advertising it is!

Hey, Maxis. If you get enough money from this you might consider buying yourselves back from EA. That might, if you are lucky, buy you back some credibility with you fans. If you don't attempt to buy yourselves back and you keep rolling over like EA's bitch-in-heat that is tacit consent that you were 'okay' with how this all went down.

I'm just kind of worried that people are saying "Hey, it's always-online, so of course the launch is going to be broken". When did that become ok? We can't start getting complacent like that. I agree that ALL of those launches are shit, but they SHOULDN'T be shit.

Apologizing or even giving a free game is not enough. They need to get rid of the stupid always-on DRM. Single-Player must be viable offline.

Processing that Large File is so much fun.

I did this once with Diablo III, never again. EA lost $60 (plus DLC?) because of it. If this is what gaming is coming to, goodbye.

Actually, these problems seem to plague still only US servers.

I played just 3-4 times in the last 5 days and I live in Italy.

First day (launch day here) I had some issues connecting, but managed to stay up for 3,5 hours.

The next day I couldn't connect.

Sunday and Monday nights I managed to connect at first try and played for about 2,5-3 hours each day, with no lost connection or queues.

Leaderboards and other stuff is disabled, but cheetah speed si working.

I coudn't say mine was a flawless experience, but havent had any serious issue with the game other than inability to play the second day.

What puzzles me is "More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta." You stupid dumbasses! You created only THREE beta sessions and they were ONE-HOUR-LONG! Who the hell plays a game like SimCity for just ONE HOUR?? You really calculated server capacity base on 1-hour-long play sessions? No surprise your servers blew up the moment you released the game!

@satelliteoflove said:

Maxis won't exist after a year, anyways. It matters not.

In other news: Maxis takes full responsibility for game they developed, internet pats it on the head and continues blaming EA.

SimCity 5 - Edit freeway anywhere even outside boundary, still saves and syncs!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmce9oIxJag

EA full of shit? You bet.

An apology I can respect.

@scaramoosh: I can't stand people like you, "It is the fault of you the consumer for expecting a final working product as you were explicitly told you would receive from the company that made the product."

How about a new business model scaramoosh, One in which we the consumer gets to play the game on day one but the company producing it only gets paid for their product after it actually Fu#*ing works and is the final version of the product! That sounds a lot better than the current model of "Oh wow, our expectations of how many people would purchase our game day one was drastically exceeded, oh well, we have their money, so we can be smug as#holes and count on degenerate flaming fanboys to carry our rancid water and defend the debacle we and no one else created.