A screenshot of "Sim City"(Photo: © 2012 Electronic Arts Inc.)
By Brett Molina, USA TODAY
The general manager of Maxis, the studio behind city-building simulation SimCity, says the recent connection woes plaguing the recently-launched game are "almost behind us."
In a new statement posted late Sunday evening, Maxis GM Lucy Bradshaw says the studio has deployed more servers and cut back on game crashes by 92%.
"A
combination of optimizing our server architecture and response times,
deploying these enhancements on both a series of new and the original
servers and issuing a few critical client updates has achieved getting
virtually everyone into the game and, once in, having a great time
building cities and sharing regions," says Bradshaw.
Bradshaw adds Maxis will need "a few more days of data" before declaring the connection problems solved.
Launched last Tuesday, SimCity
has become almost unplayable, with owners failing to connect online and
build their cities. If players are fortunate enough to connect, they
are greeted with several technical bugs.
The issues have been tied
to the game's requirement of an "always-on" experience, where players
must maintain an Internet connection to play any part of SimCity.
Despite
the post-release problems, Maxis does not plan on changing this
requirement in the immediate future. "We have no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon but we'll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts," read a tweet from the game's official account.
Last week, Maxis announced they would reward all SimCity owners with a free, downloadable Electronic Arts title
to compensate for the launch issues. Owners with an activated game will
get an e-mail on March 18 with details on how to obtain their free
title.
Bradshaw thanked fans who have supported SimCity throughout
its launch struggles. "I can't begin to explain the way a development
team feels when something you're proud of is threatened at launch," she
says. "Our biggest fear was that people who love this franchise would be
scared off by bad reviews about the connectivity issues. But you put
your faith in us."