Electronic Arts has asked its online affiliates to “please stop actively promoting” the beleaguered SimCity.
The latest twist in the SimCity nightmare from which Electronic Arts cannot awaken is truly amazing. In an email sent out this morning, the publisher asked affiliates of Origin’s Linkshare program to stop promoting SimCity. EA has “deactivated all SimCity text links and creative,” the email said, “and we ask you to please remove any copy promoting SimCity from your website for the time-being.”
“To be clear we are continuing to payout commissions on all SimCity sales that are referred, however we are requesting that you please stop actively promoting the game,” the email states. “We will notify you as soon as the SimCity marketing campaigns have been resumed and our promotional links are once again live in the Linkshare interface. We apologize for any inconveniences that this may cause, and we thank you for your cooperation.”
The problem, of course, is that SimCity servers have proven woefully inadequate for the demands of the game. EA has promised to add more servers over the weekend to lighten the load, and in the meantime has disabled “non-critical” gameplay features in hopes of bringing stability to core gameplay, an effort that at this point appears to have largely failed. Amazon actually stopped selling the game yesterday because of all the technical issues, although it has since put it back into rotation, and a not-entirely-surprising petition demanding the removal of always-on DRM in this and future EA games has attracted nearly 39,000 signatures.
Stay tuned!
Source: Polygon
UPDATE: We contacted EA and were told that the company would not be commenting on the situation.
