EA has officially announced that it will be shutting down three of its Facebook games, The Sims Social, SimCity Social, and Pet Society, all of which have been struggling recently to find an audience.
In a statement, EA said it was a "difficult decision," but the company has decided to retire these "older" games after seeing a steady drop in players and activity for each title. "For people who have seen other recent shutdowns of social games, perhaps this is not surprising," EA stated.
These three games will go offline permanently on June 14. SimCity Social was the newest of the group, having launched less than a year ago on June 25, 2012. The Sims Social was released on August 9, 2011; while Pet Society was released on August 8, 2008.
EA offered statements on each of the titles, although they were all more or less the same message. In regards to The Sims Social, the company said, "We had to make the difficult decision to close down The Sims Social so we can reallocate development resources to other titles that we hope you'll have just as much fun playing. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we thank you for everything you've added to the community."
All three of the games were created and maintained by the EA owned PlayFish social game development studio. There's no word on how this will effect that team's current or future projects.
EA did state that it will continue to develop games for the Facebook platform, pointing towards titles such as Popcap's Bejeweled Blitz and the upcoming Plants vs Zombies Adventures.
The company assured fans that they will make the transition from these games to future Popcap developed titles as painless as possible. "You're a valued fan and we want to make sure you get a smooth transition to PopCap," EA stated.