EA Celebrates Its New WCIA 2013 Term By Killing Off SimCity, The Sims Social On Facebook

Happy trails to you.

Happy trails to you.

We should’ve known that Electronic Arts is far from being the kind of organization that would just sit back and relax on its Worst Company In America 2013 laurels. Just last week it made layoffs at its studio in Montreal and is now following that execution by lining up SimCity Social and The Sims Social on the chopping block. Both Facebook games will shut down June 14.

In two basically identical posts on the official forums for SimCity Social and The Sims Social, the company says it’s super sorry if you’ve plunked down all that actual cash for “diamonds” and “SimCash” respectively to spend in the games, and advises everyone to spend it before the games go down.

Just replace the words “The Sims Social” for “SimCity Social” in here and you’ll get the same apology. No wasted effort on crafting separate FAQ sections, nope. Not here.

We know that you may be disappointed by this. Retiring games is never easy, we hope you’ve enjoyed playing SimCity Social as much as we enjoyed making it. Thank you to all of our passionate and dedicated players for supporting SimCity Social. We hope to see you in some of our other titles on Facebook and other platforms.

The reasoning behind these executions is so the company can “reallocated development resources to other titles that we hope you’ll have just as much fun playing.”

Translation: We’re sick of spending money on games that a lot of people play for free and don’t spend any cash on.

The FAQ on both forums advises fans to “keep an eye on this post where we’ll announce a special offer to thank you for playing our game.” We’re going to go ahead and guess that this will in no way whatsoever make up for the annoyance of killing off popular games.

Consumerist reader Steve echoes the sentiment we’re seeing out there on the Internets as a result of this announcement: “All they are doing is encouraging people to spend their diamonds in the game in the next two months and not offering any type of refund whatsoever. Worst company indeed.”

Another reader notes that it isn’t just these two games, but all games from the developer Playfish, including Madden NFL Superstars, Pet Society, NHL Superstars and FIFA Superstars.

The Sims Social is shutting down on June 14th. [Playfish/EA Community]
SimCity Social is shutting down on June 14th. [Playfish/EA Community]

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