‘SimCity’ Maker EA Taking Drastic Action To Fix Server Issues

SimCity launched four days ago and the EA title has been beset with problems almost from the first moment it went live. Server issues that have caused long waits to play the game have made customers furious. Unfortunately, angry gamers have had mixed results when they’ve tried to get their money back.

Now the company is taking some drastic action in hopes that they can free up some server space and get more people online and happily playing. EA has turned to disabling “non-critical gameplay features” inside SimCity in hopes that this will move towards solving the problem.

An EA spokesman made the announcement about this attempted fix by saying: “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).”

One of the features that has been turned off is probably going to annoy those who are the most dedicated of players. Since the first version of the game, “cheetah speed” has been an integral part of the title.

This function allows players to speed up time in their city, so they can see if actions they have taken have actually worked out quickly. This is one of the basic functions that has been turned off as Electronic Arts tries to figure out the server problems.

Along with “cheetah speed,” the company has shut down the leaderboards and achievements. The server issues are starting to affect EA’s bottom line as Amazon.com has decided to temporarily stop selling the title digitally.

SimCity is launching in Europe today, and, while EA says those servers will hold, they also know that continued problems in North America could cut into sales figures across the pond.