After three weeks of painful silence from the development team, diehard EA-Land fans were horrified to learn today that the revamp of 2002’s The Sims Online will be shut down permanently August 1st.
A post on the official EA-Land blog (via Geek Gestalt) notified players of the impending termination:
It is with mixed emotions that today we are announcing the EA-Land experiment will soon draw to a close. Since 2002, EA-Land / TSO has attracted a very special group of players (of which you are one) and we certainly appreciate your participation in the EA-Land community. The lifetime of the game has drawn to an end, and now we will be focusing on new ideas and other innovative concepts in the games arena. We’d like to thank everyone who has taken part in this online community as a unique experience in the virtual world.
While EA is offering paying subscribers “as a token of our appreciation” one of two gifts of store credit, many feel cheated and dismayed by the sudden closure, and other players cite the long silence before this notice as evidence of fraud — they claim EA had continued to take their money even as the company ‘must have known’ that the game was going under. GameCyte intends to investigate these allegations — if you have any information, please direct it to sean@gamecyte.com.
EA has set up a new customer support page that explains more of the details, and several players who have been billed by EA since the closure announcement are advised that they can request a refund using this procedure on the Stratics forums.
UPDATE 5/1, 9:15AM: An EA-Land player has just informed that as of approximately 4PM yesterday — shortly after GameCyte asked users to come forth with information — blog comments were shut down, and GameCyte’s post was deleted. The post now contains 232 comments. It’s an interesting coincidence, at the least.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
No I don’t find it a coincidence. I find it pure EA style. They have lied to the public for years and continue and love to censor their subscribers. They have deleted many comments by other players that listed how we wanted to save the game.
They don’t like to hear how they failed. They don’t like to take responsibility for why the game actually is being closed. Their complete mismanaging and sabotaging their own game. But before closing it they had to try to separate it from the other The Sims games so that it would not effect the upcoming release. Find out the truth to what they have done from the virtual players they are murdering.
Come help us fight for our game! Lets see if GamyCyte can help get the truth out. Help us in our fight.. Help us save our community of friends and family. Don’t let Electric Arts murder our SIMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.playercampaigns.com
http://www.petitiononline.com/kt5892/petition.html
May 10th, 2008 at 5:27 am
They are now making the game unplayble for the thousands still trying to play out their final days.
They have deleted our Custom Content
We can’t land in our own homes
Paying subscribers have been turned into free players
Calling EA customer Support gets us no where
Many more issues to list that are happening on a daily basis.
Community Rep gives us no answers to the reasons on why these things are happening. Maybe you can find out but us players are getting nothing but more and more issues on a daily basis. Seems to us they are trying to force us out before their sunset deadline. Typical Electric Arts - not keeping to the promises they made. They not only treat their customers like crap but their employees too.