SimCity Fix Means Disabling Features as Amazon Suspends Sales

By Kevin Parrish
published

It's been an "exciting" week for EA, Maxis and SimCity fans.

EA has decided to fix some of the server problems plaguing SimCity since its Tuesday launch by rolling out a hotfix that improves stability. While that may sound like good news, some of that stability stems from disabling a few non-critical gameplay features including leaderboards, achievements and region filters.

Community manager "LadyCoconut" is assuring gamers that EA is doing everything it can to fix the issues. On Thursday morning, she said that EA was aggressively undergoing maintenance on the servers and adding capacity to meet demand, thus performance would fluctuate during this process. By Thursday evening, the company had restarted the EU East 2 and Oceanic 1 servers, and added the EU West 3, EU West 4 and EU East 3 servers.

"What we are doing is deploying more servers over the coming two days which will alleviate many of the ongoing issues," SimCity Senior Producer Kip Katsarelis said Wednesday night. "We are also paying close attention to all the bug reports we are receiving from our fans. We’ve already pushed several updates in the last few days. Our live ops team is working 24/7 to resolve issues and ensure that bug fixes roll into the game as quickly as possible."

Meanwhile, Amazon supposedly halted the sale of digital copies of SimCity although it's now available to purchase here (opens in new tab). The game was listed as "Currently Unavailable" Thursday night presumably due to the issues surrounding the game. However the company is still warning users of a potential problem after sinking a hefty $60 for the digital Standard Edition.

"Many customers are having issues connecting to the SimCity servers," Amazon warns. "EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed. Please visit https://help.ea.com/en/simcity/simcity for more information."

What likely happened was that EA asked Amazon to temporarily suspend sales to limit the number of new users flooding an already struggling infrastructure. Sales resumed as of Friday morning, but another suspension could happen again if EA is still having difficulty managing the SimCity flood.

The SimCity launch has certainly been a disaster in its first week, but has it topped Blizzard's Diablo 3 launch?

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Kevin Parrish
47 Comments Comment from the forums
  • velocityg4
    Wouldn't have happened if they left a single player game as offline. There was no good reason to make it online only. Ruining a great franchise. I've owned Sim City 1 through 4 and played each one avidly. I hope they lose a lot of money off this game since they alienated many fans.
    Reply
  • Shankovich
    Will this make EA learn? Probably not. Just wait until Battlefield 4 comes out and its always online DRM screws up too (since they'll get even more people wanting to play it)....Maxis has no say in this for sure, I don't blame them really.

    At least we're getting a free game out of it...a good game, like Need for Speed.
    Reply
  • Shankovich
    ShankovichWill this make EA learn? Probably not. Just wait until Battlefield 4 comes out and its always online DRM screws up too (since they'll get even more people wanting to play it)....Maxis has no say in this for sure, I don't blame them really. At least we're getting a free game out of it...a good game, like Need for Speed.
    At the end, I meant HOPEFULLY a good game
    Reply
  • dudewitbow
    ShankovichWill this make EA learn? Probably not. Just wait until Battlefield 4 comes out and its always online DRM screws up too (since they'll get even more people wanting to play it)....Maxis has no say in this for sure, I don't blame them really. At least we're getting a free game out of it...a good game, like Need for Speed.the problem is users keep buying into EA. they will not learn their lesson until supporting EA stops, as investors keep investing in them. That goes for buying games like Crysis 3, Dead Space 3, or upcoming games like Dragon Age 3. the more people buy into it, the more EA is just going to do what they have already been doing, because their money is coming from the investors.
    Reply
  • s3anister
    $60 for a broken game... Never again. Not after D3.
    Reply
  • kcorp2003
    ShankovichWill this make EA learn? Probably not. Just wait until Battlefield 4 comes out and its always online DRM screws up too.
    Um, Battlefield always requires an internet connection to play multiplayer. Unless you mean Single Player, I know Battlefield 3 Single Player can be played offline. and logically Co-Op will require online.
    Reply
  • EA never learns from its mistakes.
    Reply
  • kcorp2003
    @every1hasaids... well i just bought Mirror's edge and i'm having a lot of fun right now. I rarely buy games from EA except for BF2142, Bf2 & BFBC2. I buy games I enjoy, like the gears series and halo series. but i respect your stand against EA.
    Reply
  • f-14
    all i read was EA, say no more.

    their shining examples of star craft and diablo3 are pure filth due to the online 'cloud' b.s. i pray every day anon takes down EA's entire server farms and renders them into what the 'cloud' is worth. nothing but target practice for Lock N' Load with R. Lee Ermey on the history channel
    Reply
  • abbadon_34
    Why did I read this topic yesterday and in more detail on foxnews? I honestly thought Tom's had already reported this earlier and general news outlets were just noticing. I didn't release Tom's was the one playing catchup, and missing details like the issue of high official reviews vs. low user reviews and lowering of initial preview ratings. The only "old news" was the suggestion EA should forgo DRM for single player games. For shame.
    Reply