EA Closing SimCity Social, Sims Social

[macscfan 117]

I've been lurking here for a long time, have been very hesitant to pick up SimCity (partly waiting on the Mac version), and I saw this press release this morning, and it really bugged me - what happens if EA closes down SimCity, do we lose all of the DLC, etc. that we paid for?

 

http://www.ea.com/news/maxis-an-update-on-facebook-titles

 

 

 

Today we are informing players of the difficult decision to retire some of our Facebook games: The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society.

 

After millions of people initially logged in to play these games, the number of players and amount of activity has fallen off.  For people who have seen other recent shutdowns of social games, perhaps this is not surprising.

EA will continue to deliver popular titles for Facebook, most notably games from PopCap, including Bejeweled Blitz, Solitaire Blitz and the recently-announced Plants vs. Zombies Adventures.

For players who have enjoyed our games, we will be making a special offer to introduce you to a PopCap game.  You’re a valued fan and we want to make sure you get a smooth transition to PopCap.  More details about that offer will appear in-game soon.

Players with questions about the shutdowns can find FAQs linked here: The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society.  The titles will go offline on June 14, 2013.

On behalf of the teams who developed these games, thank you for playing. 

SimCity Social FAQ: http://forum.playfish.com/showthread.php?t=2968221

 

 

 Why is SimCity Social being retired?

 

 

We had to make the difficult decision to close down SimCity Social so we can reallocate development resources to other titles that we hope you’ll have just as much fun playing. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we thank you for everything you've added to the community.

 

What if I have an existing balance of Diamonds in SimCity Social on Facebook? 



Players are encouraged to spend their remaining balance of Diamonds in SimCity Social before the game is retired on June 14th. As of that date, any remaining Diamonds left in the game will be invalid

 

 

 

Sims Social FAQ:  http://forum.playfish.com/showthread.php?t=2968222

 

It was announced just a few hours ago, but the forum thread on EA has grown to 21 pages:  http://forum.playfish.com/showthread.php?t=2968221

 

As I said, this is what concerns me with the always-on aspect of SC, and some of the things that have been said about it.   I'm not surprised, I gave SimCity Social a few weeks, but it never quite grabbed me, but I know a lot of people who put a lot of time into it.

 

Edit: Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/simcitysocial

 

[Mootilda 76]

That's right.  You are only renting your DLC from EA and when they decide to close their servers, your DLC becomes useless.  This is one of the reasons why people are protesting online-only games like SimCity 2013.

[macscfan 117]

That's right.  You are only renting your DLC from EA and when they decide to close their servers, your DLC becomes useless.  This is one of the reasons why people are protesting online-only games like SimCity 2013.

 

I do not want to lose the DLC and game if the servers are shut down, but I especially do not want to lose my cities, and I don't want EA deciding when I am done with the game.  If SC4 had the same always-online "feature" that SC5, would EA have kept the SC4 servers going after 10 years?   SimCity Social didn't last a year, was focused on micro-transactions and social networking and everything being "in the cloud",  things which EA considers to be important going forward.

[The_City_Builder 299]

This is exactly the reason why I never purchase anything from a Facebook game.

 

I mean, I enjoyed SimCity Social for the first week it was out, but once you fill up the map and start having to pester friends for things, it got old fast.

[NCGAIO 562]

Note that it is not just the social Simcity and that maybe the real motives are better expressed herein related ...
 

Quote
These announcements follow on the April 12 announcement that EA’s Montréal studio will be reorganized and downsized. All of these decisions, of course, are taking place in the context of EA’s impending Q4 and full year results, which are expected to be at the bottom end of or below EA’s guidance.

 

source Forbes:Anti-Social Behavior? EA Closes Sim City, Sims Social, Limits Facebook Exposure

Logically concern for continuation of Simcity servers is quite understandable and without the real indicators of how walk using the service then there are only the information of third parties.
 

Quote
SimCity’s launch issues in early March were well publicized, and though it hung on to come in at #20, the trend is not looking good. During the last week of the month SimCity was the 34th most played game, and the drop off of new players joining the game has been precipitous since mid-month. It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, EA can do to turn this around.

source: RAPTR'S MOST PLAYED GAMES - MARCH 2013

[cirugo 1,889]

How long do you think it will be before they shut down the SimCity servers?

[Hellken 1,658]

Good job, EA... Another game is dead in less than a year...

[Catchin22 299]

These guys seem to have absolutely no respect for peoples money. I won't buy another EA game again, ever.

[macscfan 117]

How long do you think it will be before they shut down the SimCity servers?

 

When SimCity 2014 comes out?

[MayorQuimbie 13]

I am worried that EA have a history of releasing new games to a series yearly although I doubt this is what their long term plan is for Simcity? If successful I imagine it will be treated like the Sims series... yearly updates with lots and lots of DLC....

[Herdervriend 46]

Lucky I don't play Facebook crap games.

[MayorQuimbie 13]

I honestly dont see why anyone that works hard for their money would spend it on that drivel you find on facebook..............

 

The games industry were just starting to mess around with ingame micro purchasing when the likes of facebook gaming came around.... all I can say is thank god...

 

However the next logical step for any of these games producers is going to involve some sort of crossover to/from social gaming...  and I wont be buying into any of it....

[CaptCity 4,752]

Other thread on same topic merged here. Some srambling of posts may exist. Thanks...

[T Wrecks 10,209]

These guys seem to have absolutely no respect for peoples money.

Oh, now you're being unfair. I do believe they have the utmost respect for people's money - as soon as it has transferred to their accounts, that is.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I started by being a 'It's Maxis, our dreams have been answered!' person till the info releases last year... Then I was a 'EA is evil' person till earlier this year. Then I became a 'Glassbox actually seems kinda cool' person, preordered... and was massively dissapointed. I never even played Simcity Social, although I have played The Sims Social a few years ago. (and was very quickly bored with it)

[MrCinatit 30]

My surprise is that the game is still around. I think I gave it a week before letting it go - to me, it was a replica of City Life. This even kind of makes me wonder if EA's dreams were to fuse the two together, in a sense, to create a SimCity game with massive social aspects such as this, allowing players greater and greater awards for interacting with other players. Too bad for them the social gaming genre is on a downfall. 

[Mootilda 76]

Interesting article about whether we "own" our games:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/01/thought-do-we-own-our-steam-games/

[AkemiAzula 280]

I remember back when I was trying to sell some old stuff and I read in the inside of books about not having the right to re-sell them etc etc. I also remember thinking about photocopying and other things a lot, and about photography a lot. There is so much ambiguity regarding ownership/copyright... With the coming of the digital age (an age when, while illegally, it is possible to download expensive music/software within a few minutes and it is possible to pay for software instantly via paypal) this was naturally going to become even more of a problem.

 

This reminds me of when I first tried to write musical pieces (albeit of a weak nature) as a young boy at school, and I wondered what would happen if I accidentally wrote a score somebody else had already written... Also I used to consider just how much copyright affected something. Say for instance you made a book about a boy at a school for wizards and witches... Or a book (even more controversially) about a politician who has a resemblance to a real one, which would possibly become 'libellous'.

 

Ownership is an issue even regarding the solid 'real life' items we 'own'. Even a car or house can be disowned by the government, for instance for speeding offenses (legitimate and sensible) or for developing a new freeway or airport (questionable and debatable). The very furniture and books we own, the very clothing we own, is protected only in theory from theft. What is to stop a person from taking clothing from a clothes line if nobody sees them? 

 

A suggestion (which got a user shot down in flames rather quickly) was to boycott Steam games, and send a message to the gaming industry. And while I am not averse to such suggestions in general, I believe the very concept of ownership and copyright should be re-examined, not just with regard to games. 

 

I am presently having to get a new passport as part of a lengthy process to unfreeze some paypal funds... There is certainly a great deal to be desired in this state of things, where innocent, and wrongly convicted, individuals, are having to battle against corporations whose responsibility it should be to protect their clients, and to serve them, as is the function of a business.

[macscfan 117]

This is a big concern with SimCity 5 with me:

 

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-15-the-perils-of-whale-hunting

 

 

 

EA All Play senior vice president and general manager Nick Earl acknowledged that shutting down games can burn bridges with the diehard customer base, saying it was a natural result of having a live service business and moving resources from one project to another.  "The strategy that we tend to employ is moving these live services to lower cost centers, so the economic structure shifts in a way that you can support a game for much longer, even though the revenue line is not as strong as it was," Earl said. "So we've got a very strong group of studios in Hyderabad, in India, and it's a lower cost center and will be a lower cost center for the next few years. And to be completely honest here, there are times where you just have to sunset a game and there are fans still playing that game."

 

I loathe the idea of spending $60, then possibly more on DLC, spending a lot of time building cities, and then one day EA deciding they have to sunset it, and I lose everything.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I remember a day when you bought a CD at a game store and could, ten years later, find that old CD and run it again...

 

Now that is how the gaming industry should be.

 

However I am not averse to 'cloud' technology per se, as long as there is a similar solidity

[catty-cb 4,392]

This is a big concern with SimCity 5 with me:

 

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-15-the-perils-of-whale-hunting

 

 

 

EA All Play senior vice president and general manager Nick Earl acknowledged that shutting down games can burn bridges with the diehard customer base, saying it was a natural result of having a live service business and moving resources from one project to another.  "The strategy that we tend to employ is moving these live services to lower cost centers, so the economic structure shifts in a way that you can support a game for much longer, even though the revenue line is not as strong as it was," Earl said. "So we've got a very strong group of studios in Hyderabad, in India, and it's a lower cost center and will be a lower cost center for the next few years. And to be completely honest here, there are times where you just have to sunset a game and there are fans still playing that game."

 

I loathe the idea of spending $60, then possibly more on DLC, spending a lot of time building cities, and then one day EA deciding they have to sunset it, and I lose everything.

 

I won't buy any game unless I can buy it on a CD or DVD, I'll happily buy addon's or DLCs as an download, but the base game its got to be on a CD or DVD

 

... just been visiting the EA forums of the games shutting down and some people especially the Pet Society people are really upset by what EA Games are doing ... they are trying a different tack as complaining to EA Games isn't going to get them anywhere ... so they are complaining to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook instead.

 

Their argument is they joined facebook to play pet society, if pet society shuts down then they have no reason to continue to have facebook accounts.

 

-catty

[Yilku1 5]

 

How long do you think it will be before they shut down the SimCity servers?

 

When SimCity 2014 comes out?

 

IF comes out

[Larks2242 251]

This poses an interesting question for the future of non psychical games, at least in the past when a game is completed there is always been the resale value of the disc, up until current times with consoles there is the current game without online play since you need to buy the code if bought secondhand.

 

 

Now with online the question is can you trade in or resell a game if the server gets shut down or are you stuck with it as the end user?

 

Seems to me after spending $60 you won't get any of your investment back and you end up having a program that after a period of time is no longer usable and has to be deleted.

I feel as if this is taking more of a one step forward, two steps back approach to the video game market.

[Duke87 1,070]

It's less an issue of that the game doesn't come on a CD or DVD and more an issue of that the game exists only on the internet, never on your own hard drive. If a game is downloadable, you can burn it to as many CDs or whatever as you like, even if you didn't buy one in the first place. But if a game requires use of the internet to function, then it is perishable because you are not in possession of all the resources needed for the game to function - and as soon as the entity that is in possession of those resources decides to stop maintaining them, poof! Game's gone.

 

By virtue of a game being "social" "interactive" or "online multiplayer" (an increasingly popular concept), it is impossible to make it self contained and able to run on one device without needing the internet.

 

And this is why I just start to feel more like an old fogey in the modern gaming world. "Why in my day, if you wanted to play a game with another person you needed a second controller and they had to be sitting next to you!" I prefer the way it used to be and I am sadly finding that games that are coming out these days do not interest me, period.

[catty-cb 4,392]

... it is impossible to make it self contained and able to run on one device without needing the internet.

 

Not impossible if you don't mind your game becoming like the Groundhog Day movie, the Pet Society forums have found that if you install VirtualBox and Ubuntu (needs a fairly decent PC with a lot of memory) then start up Pet Society and

 

 

 

You have came this far, so the rest of the hard work should be a piece of cake! Basically, what you need to do is visit every room in your house, visit all your friends house (and their rooms), visit the mayor, street, shops...etc. Open your inventory and wardrobe and scroll through everything you got! (This is VERY IMPORTANT)

Once you have got everything "packed and ready to go", turn off the network adapter in your virtual machine so that it goes offline from the network. So technically at this point, your game now is disconnected from the server, but it is still running in your browser.

Now, use the VirtualBox snapshot function to take a snapshot (under the menu Machine->Take a snapshot). Once the snapshot is taken, you can power off the virtual machine. Turn your computer off...etc.

 

you now have a snapshot of the game according to the instructions and next time you want to play you start up VirtualBox, open the virtual machine, and restore the snapshot, and hit Start, you can't save but in theory you can continue to play the game.

 

I don't play any of these types of games so I don't know how well it would work or what games you can do it with, but in the case of the Pet Society people they just want to save their virtual pet.

 

-catty

[Larks2242 251]

It's less an issue of that the game doesn't come on a CD or DVD and more an issue of that the game exists only on the internet, never on your own hard drive. If a game is downloadable, you can burn it to as many CDs or whatever as you like, even if you didn't buy one in the first place. 

 

Depends on the distributing source, you can't burn games from a PS3, and it is connected/restricted to only that account.