EA does it again. Developer Maxis known for its simulation titles like Simcity, The Sims and Spore, bought by EA in 1997, has now been shut down. The company was originally founded in 1987 as Maxis Software (later called Maxis) by Will Wright and Jeff Braun. EA will continue to use the name as a brand for the current studio working on The Sims title.
A statement issue by EA representative reads:
“Today we are consolidating Maxis IP development to our studios in Redwood Shores, Salt Lake City, Helsinki and Melbourne locations as we close our Emeryville location.
Maxis continues to support and develop new experiences for current Sims and SimCity players, while expanding our franchises to new platforms and developing new cross-platform IP. These changes do not impact our plans for The Sims. Players will continue to see rich new experiences in The Sims 4, with our first expansion pack coming soon along with a full slate of additional updates and content in the pipeline.”
SimCity and The Sims 4 did not perform well. The 2013 reboot of the Simcity franchise faced a lot of criticism for its flawed online system and an always-online requirement. The game also did not sit well with critics or players owing to the restrictive design choices and DLC decisions.
EA in particular seems to have a bad rep when it comes to maintaining with development houses. We have seen similar stories with many other studios EA bought like Mythic, PlayFish, Black Box Games, DreamWorks Interactive/Danger Close/EA Los Angeles and Phenomic. All these studios closed within the last two years. While the mentioned studios have been shut, their work lives on as EA has kept the popular IP’s alive. Like we recently saw Dungeon Keeper brought back on the mobile platform after the original developer Bullfrog was shut in 2001.
