EA Declares Mea Culpa for SimCity, Offers Free Game Owners

For all the disgruntled owners of the Electronic Arts published and Maxis produced game SimCity, there’s a little light at the end of the tunnel. Electronic Arts (EA) has announced that all gamers who purchased a copy will receive a free digital PC title. Anyone with an activated copy of the popular city building game by March 18 are eligible for the offer.

Because the game is meant to be played online, an internet connection is required to play. Since bandwidth and server capacity is the heart of any online game, gamers that showed up in droves to play were plagued with issues and spotty performance.

Lacy Bradshaw, general manager of Maxis, made the announcement in a blog post, directly addressing the SimCity server issues that have plagued the game since launch. Other details were outlined in the blog post by Bradshaw, who admits that a lot more people logged in to play SimCity than were anticipated. The issues were reminiscent of Blizzard Entertainment’s fumble on the opening night of Diablo 3’s launch.

Bradshaw stated that the server issues that started when the game launched have improved significantly as their team has added more space in recent days. Nevertheless, there are still widespread reports of response and stability issues that the Maxis team is working to correct. The post also outlines the fact that players were diving into SimCity in ways that weren’t exposed in the beta release. The server capacity of SimCity has been increased by 120 percent and the number of disrupted experiences dipped by about 80 percent, according to Bradshaw.

Later in the post, Bradshaw notes that the problem has a silver lining around the fact that the game has sold through much better than EA ever anticipated. To get back into their customers’ good graces, they are offering a free PC download game from the EA portfolio. An offer will be sent to SimCity players who have activated their game via email, instructing them how to redeem a free game.