Flick off the lights. The party’s over. According to an announcement from EA this morning, SimCity Social, The Sims Social, and Pet Society are all going offline on June 14. Once those three titles go dark, Playfish’s social Facebook presence will fade into blackness, too.
Flick off the lights. The party’s over. According to an announcement from EA this morning, SimCity Social, The Sims Social, and Pet Society are all going offline on June 14. Once those three titles go dark, Playfish’s social Facebook presence will fade into blackness, too.
The shutdown is reportedly a result of ailing player counts. EA bought Playfish for $300 million in 2009, and signed into a five-year deal with Facebook in 2010, but many of Playfish’s executives have since left EA, including co-founders Sebastian de Halleux and Sam Lababidi.
EA’s had a rocky year full of layoffs and studio shutdowns. Over 100 employees were let go from the EA Mobile Montreal studio last week, and there are reports about studio closures in London (where Playfish is based), as well as EA Mobile Brazil and Bioware Social.
Joystiq reached out to EA for further commentary, but the studio declined to offer up any additional information about Playfish’s status. Fans of the doomed Playfish games are encouraged to spend their in-game currency. Think of it as a shopping spree before the end of the world.
