The SimCity fiasco continues, as Electronic Arts continues to struggle to get the game's servers functional. Despite the constant assurances before and after the game launched that the company had things under control, the situation continues to worsen.
In a latest measure to try and alleviate the pressure on their servers, EA has temporarily disabled the fastest simulation setting, Cheetah. EA's community manager also revealed they would be continuing to disable a few "non-critical gameplay features," such as leaderboards, achievements, and region filters.
"We are continuing to do everything we can to address the server issues. In the meantime, so that we can give you as good an experience as possible, we are in the process of deploying a hotfix to all servers. This includes various improvements and also disables a few non-critical gameplay features (leaderboards, achievements and region filters). Disabling these features will in no way affect your core gameplay experience."
It doesn't look like it's having a huge impact though, as Amazon has received so many user complaints that it temporarily pulled the game from its storefront. A notice on the site's product listing reads:
"Many customers are having issues connecting to the "SimCity" servers. EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed. Please visit https://help.ea.com/en/simcity/simcity for more information."
Earlier this morning they re-enabled purchases of the game, but the warning remains in place. With these new developments, will more game features be disabled? While it's good that Maxis and Electronic Arts are working to find a solution, making the game less functional seems like a poor way of going about it.
A recently leaked internal memo shows that the companies are very aware of the problem, and are working to "quickly and dramatically increase the number and stability of our servers and with that, the number of players who can simultaneously access the game." The memo adds that they are working "24/7" to get the issues worked out.
How they have managed to bungle this situation this poorly, and for so long, is quite a mystery though. Hopefully for everyone still struggling to play the game, the server issues will get sorted out in the next 24 hours, and the games industry as a whole chalks this one down as a lesson to be learned.