Following a disastrous launch early this month, game studio EA Maxis has announced that customers who bought SimCity will receive a second game for free.
“To get us back in your good graces, we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio,” said Lucy Bradshaw, general manager of Maxis in a post on EA’s website. “That was dumb, but we’re committed to fixing it.”
The offer will be extended to anyone who buys the game before March 18. The titles available to the early adopters for download have not been announced yet.
According to Kotaku, the launch of the latest installment in the classic city-building franchise was marred by a number of technical problems. The game uses a Digital Rights Management system which requires an Internet connection to play. EA’s servers did not have the capacity to handle the volume of people logging on at launch, leaving many players waiting in frustration.
“The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected,” Bradshaw said. “More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta.”
John Gaudiosi, a video game journalist at Forbes.com, said EA should have anticipated the demand for the game and been more prepared for the launch.
A lack of a “pre-loading” system also forced everyone who bought the game to download it at the same time when it was released, causing long download times and error messages.
EA said that they have more than doubled the server capacity since the incident and that SimCity should be fully functional soon.
UPDATE: According to The Escapist Magazine, EA announced Monday that early adopters of SimCity can choose their free game from the following eight titles:
- Battlefield 3
- Dead Space 3
- Mass Effect 3
- Bejeweled 3
- Medel of Honor: Warfighter
- Need for Speed: Most Wanted
- Plants Vs. Zombies
- SimCity 4
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