Hasta La Gadget!

The botched launch of the new SimCity game has upset many this week, however there is a little good news. EA Maxis exec Lucy Bradshaw posted that the company is working on its server issues, with capacity reportedly up 120 percent in the last 48 hours and “disrupted experiences” down 80 percent. As a way of making up for a launch that was “dumb” for not anticipating far more players and activity than seen in its beta, EA will offer all those who’ve activated a copy by March 18th a free PC game download. There’s no word on which game(s) from the EA portfolio will be available but users will be notified by email. The one thing they won’t be getting however is what many are asking for: an offline option that avoids all the server mess and entanglements of always-on DRM.

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Source: EA

You know things are really bad when Electronic Arts is actively suspending all of its marketing efforts on SimCity. The publisher has sent an email to its marketing affiliate partners asking them to “please stop actively promoting the game” until further notice. Specifically, EA’s Origin says they have “deactivated all SimCity text links and creative,” and they’re asking affiliates to remove all promotional material from their websites.

EA plans to resume their marketing and promotional efforts at some point, though, mentioning in the email that they will notify affiliates when they can start promoting the game again. However, EA says they will still “payout commissions on all SimCity sales that are referred,” which is certainly good news for affiliates still.

SimCity launched earlier this week, and it didn’t quite go as planned. Of course, no one can really plan for how a launch will go, but we’re sure Electronic Arts wasn’t expecting this much backlash and issues. It turns out demand of the new game was higher than expected, resulting in server crashes and downloading failures for gamers.

Amazon even ended up suspending digital orders of the game, while still allowing physical copies to be sold with an asterisk in hopes to temporarily cut down on the amount of gamers with access to the game and hopefully help out EA with the surge of those hankering to build their dream city. In the meantime, feel free to contribute to the Kickstarter campaign for Civitas, a cheaper DRM-free alternative to SimCity.

[via Polygon]

EA tells affiliates to “stop actively promoting” SimCity is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The SimCity launch earlier this week didn’t quite go as planned, as Electronic Arts experienced problems across the board, mostly due to servers crashing. Many gamers experienced download failures and weren’t able to play the game on launch day. Because of the outcry, a team of game developers is looking to make a SimCity clone, called Civitas, but they need your help to fund the project.

The developers are looking to create a DRM-free version of SimCity, with the ability to play the game completely while offline, something that SimCity doesn’t offer, and it’s the one feature that’s currently causing all of the problems. Plus, the game will only cost $15, at least if you back the project on Kickstarter right now.

Of course, the folks behind the project weren’t afraid to call out EA on their Kickstarter page, claiming that EA is “forcing the worst form of draconian DRM on its players.” Those are certainly some fightin’ words, but it seems the developers are confident that Civitas will be an excellent alternative to EA’s city-building offering.

Of course, the game will go into beta first for a few months, and you can join in on the beta fun by pledging $10 more on top of the $15 price of the game, which still isn’t a bad price at all, even if you didn’t get access to the beta. However, we’ll have to wait and see if the game can live up to its own expectations. So far, the project has raised almost $37,000 at the time of this writing, and they’re looking to raise $250,000 total, but there’s 24 days to go, so it can be easily achieved.

[via Kotaku]

Civitas is the DRM-free SimCity game you’ve always wanted is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you haven’t discovered yet, SimCity‘s launch on Tuesday didn’t really go as planned, as the overwhelming demand from customers has been wreaking havoc on Electronic Arts’s servers, and while the company expected the issues to be resolved by the end of the launch day, many gamers are still experiencing problems. Because of the ongoing server issues, Amazon has suspended digital download orders of the game.

Amazon is still selling the physical boxed version of SimCity, however, but they’re attaching a saying that servers have been experiencing issues and there’s currently no timeframe on when the issues will be fixed. Unsurprisingly, disgruntled SimCity gamers have taken to Amazon by giving 1-star ratings to the game, and there are well over 800 ratings currently attached.

That’s definitely not good news to prospective buyers, as they could see the 1-star rating and immediately turn away, but considering the fact that gamers can’t even buy the digital download version of the game makes up gamers’ minds for them. Currently, there’s no information as for when Amazon will begin selling the digital version again.

The game launched at midnight on Tuesday morning, but gamers were met with download failures and slow connections. Even EA’s Origin gaming service wasn’t able to distribute all the digital copies that were pre-ordered, and instead had to slowly roll them out. Some users were even reporting that after the game downloaded, they couldn’t even connect to the servers to play the game.

[via The Verge]

SimCity still plagued with server issues, Amazon suspends digital orders is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week was supposed to be a big one for PC gamers as EA’s long-awaited SimCity released, with many members of the media praising the game as it currently stands at an 82 out of 100 on Metacritic. That praise turned into many PC gamers going out and buying the game, which seems like something EA wasn’t exactly expecting as since it’s release, the game has been met with nothing but negativity to both gamers and the media.

The issue EA is having with SimCity is due to the game’s always-on DRM that requires players to always be connected to the Internet when they have the itch to manage their virtual city. It seems way more copies were sold than EA originally anticipated, which is resulting in the company’s servers not working as they would hope they would. (more…)

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