Electronic Arts has decided to shut down three of its Facebook games due to a lack of active users. The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society, all developed by EA acquisition Playfish, are the latest in a series of social games that have not seen the numbers needed from Facebook users to keep these online services going.
“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.”
This announcement doesn’t sit well with the multitude of fans who spent time and MONEY playing these games. Many social games have their own form of premium currency users acquire through playing the game. More importantly, these currencies can be acquired by purchasing them directly from the game. This is how free-to-play games make money. EA’s premium currency of choice in their social games happens to be the diamond. In games like SimCity Social, diamonds are awarded through playing the game. The amount of currency awarded is low which encourages players to purchase diamonds as often as possible. $5 in the real world will give players 35 simulated diamonds while $100 will net 900 diamonds. With the shutting down of these games in particular, fans are understandably outraged. Some are even questioning EA’s decision to shut down SimCity Social claiming it’s doing better than the recently released SimCity, while others are demanding a full refund. The biggest misfortune for the fans of these games is that they will most likely never see any type of refund or compensation given for the amount of money spent in these games. There’s also the issue of the loss of creative content, such as the Sims and their houses, or the cities players spent hundreds of hours designing.
EA isn’t the only company shutting down Facebook games. Zynga has been cost cutting on Facebook since October with games like PetVille, Mafia Wars 2, ForestVille, Vampire Wars and Indiana Jones Adventure World. Visiting these pages on Facebook redirects users to other Zynga games that are still in service.
Electronic Arts Online Services Shutdown
June 14, 2013
- Pet Society for Facebook
- SimCity Social for Facebook
- The Sims Social for Facebook
May 13, 2013
- Madden Superstars for Facebook
- NHL Superstars for Facebook
- TMI Trivia for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch
April 24, 2013
- JetSet Secrets for Facebook
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