EA’s SimCity did not get off to a good start. EA and Maxis decided that you had to be online to play the game. That’s increasingly common these days. It’s an anti-piracy technique mainly but some games do just have online built in.
The problem? EA’s servers couldn’t cope. You couldn’t actually play the game. Geek Native noticed that even Amazon had blocked downloads from their store because they didn’t want to be associated with the drama.
EA have apologised;
Here’s a quick update on the problems we were experiencing with SimCity – and a little something extra for people who bought the game.
The server issues which began at launch have improved significantly as we added more capacity. But some people are still experiencing response and stability problems that we’re working fast to address.
So what went wrong? 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. In the last 48 hours we increased server capacity by 120 percent. It’s working – the number of people who have gotten in and built cities has improved dramatically. The number of disrupted experiences has dropped by roughly 80 percent.
EA have also said that they’re going to give a free PC download game from the EA Portfolio. They said;
On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an email telling them how to redeem their free game.
This probably means if you’ve bought SimCity already you’ll get a free game. If you rush out and buy it now; well, that’s not so clear.
