SimCity launched on March 5 th , and four days later, the game is still plagued with problems. While I’m able to log in and out of the game whenever I please, things aren’t 100% satisfactory; I can’t reclaim a city I abandoned, claim empty cities, or gift money between cities.
Polygon was able to obtain an internal memo from Maxis concerning the troubles with the game’s uptime and server stability.
“I’ll start by saying that I couldn’t be more proud of SimCity and the Maxis team that made it and are supporting it,” Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw wrote in an email sent to staffers at the studio. “The game launched with great reviews from both new critics and the veterans who have loved this franchise for so many years. SimCity is a software achievement that everyone at Maxis is extremely proud of. I am also thankful for all of the hard work put in by our marketing, EA Global Publishing and Origin teams, which drove very strong Day One performance around world.”
“Then we launched it.”
Personally, I completely agree with that statement. Maxis should be proud of accomplishing what they have with SimCity.
But then it launched.
With that launch came a lot of server issues. With those server issues came a broken game. While I stand by the review I gave the game, others are updating their scores to reflect the nature of the game’s launch woes.
Bradshaw addressed those review updates in the memo:
“I’d like to say that it’s not fair — that the game score shouldn’t be punished for a server problem,” she wrote. “But it is fair.”
It is indeed fair. They attempted to provide a game that relied on a service being up 24/7. That service has not been up 24/7 and because of it the game has lost much of what makes it so enjoyable. I don’t doubt that we’ll one day see SimCity running at the capacity it should be.
Currently, however, it is not and Maxis is working around the clock to fix the issues. Just how quickly they are able to fix these issues remains to be seen.