EA apologises for “dumb” SimCity launch

Gamers were furious over long queues, slow installation, and other problems. More than 3,000 gamers left negative feedback on Amazon.

16:09 12 March 2013

Electronics Arts has apologised for the disastrous launch of the latest version of town-planning game, SimCity. Gamers, who were extremely disappointed with their experience, complained about slow installations, long queues to play, bugs, and other glitches. 

The new version, which was supposed to be the best version ever, was launched on March 5th. It was intended to be played wholly online with each city constructed sitting on a chunk of virtual land shared with other players. 

 

Lucy Bradshaw, general manager of EA’s Maxis Label, apologised in a blog posted on Friday. She said: "So what went wrong?  The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected.

 

"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.

 

"So we’re close to fixed, but not quite there. I’m hoping to post another update this weekend to let everyone know that the launch issues are behind us."