We all know that it has been announced on the 29th of April that EA-Land/The Sims Online will be closing its doors on the 1st of August 2008, by a post made by EA on the official blog in this post. It is extremely sad and devastating to see our all-time favorite game closing down its doors, specially after 8 months of hard work from the developers to improve the game and bring in new features. The decision by EA sounds extremely irrational that we can’t explain it by anything else than that EA needs some serious re-employment of managers. Why spend all this time, effort and money on something they are going to close anyways? Why put the developers into such a huge task and headache? Why bring back hope to thousands of people and then close it down?
There has been a promise of the Amnesty Program (explained in this post) to be issued before the end of April, and on the night of the promised day, we get another unexpected and unpleasant announcement instead of the Amnesty, which by the way, brought back hundreds of subscribers back to the game, that the game was closing. It sounds as a rip-off from EA … they tell us to come back, they take the subscription money of a couple of months and tells the community that it is closing. Another thing, the introduction of the ATM machines, which drove people to start buying from EA in-game currency (Simoleans), being certain that they will benefit from it as the game will become better in the future and they could use it to make a profitable business that would let them gain real $$ in the future as the cash-out feature was promised, however, never implemented. This, after hundreds of complains and possible threats of lawsuits, EA has decided to refund all the money used to buy simoleans from the ATM (published in this post on the official blog) … fair enough. However, many people have upgraded their computers or even bought new ones as we were promised that TSO/EA-Land would be moving towards The Sims 2 graphics. Many other people bought time-cards … and we guess that none of these will be refunded.
Don’t blame the developers, they have worked their butts off for all of us to have a better gameplay and new features almost weekly. Personally, I believe that the developers didn’t even know about the plans of closing EA Land since they would’ve not promised us the amnesty. I can’t believe that the developers will go into all this headache and exhaustion for nothing. Reminding that Lee left EA after EALand was announced to be closing. It also worth reminding that the last few weeks before the huge announcement was made, there was a lack of communication from the developers, with a possible reason of negotiating this decision with the top management, or simply, they have been told to leave their offices and stop working on the game.
EA has never given EA-Land much of a time or chance to succeed or to see whether it can at least attract more subscribers. Only a couple of months were given after announcing the opening of EA-Land beta . Do you think that is enough for a game to succeed?! The 11 developers worked on the game for more than 8 months and did the tasks of probably a 100 developers would do. 8 months does nothing to a game, specially with a small number of developers working on it. It should’ve been given a longer time.
The community, with the huge amount of rage and sadness expressed to the world, have decided to start up a huge campaign called PlayerCampaigns (www.playercampaigns.com) to attempt to save the game. Different ideas are being introduced and many easy, simple but effective tasks are found in the forums for everyone to do that would benefit the game. Please don’t think this is a stupid idea, many other communities have succeeded to save their favorite game. The help and support of anyone is greatly appreciated, and every single person can contribute and have a huge effect on the destiny of this game, even if you never played it. For example, the internet radios were about to go into a point were most of them would’ve closed due to some new laws and pricings, however, the community made a campaign and got the support of more people where they were sending emails to officials and more, which ended up in saving the internet radios and all those decisions were not implemented. Please join us at the PlayerCampaigns site and contribute as much as possible in any idea or task. This game has meant more than just a game for mostly everyone, it has been an escape from real life and a second home to many. Many people with disabilites were now able to talk, walk, meet and make new friends. Many people met their future wives/husbands, their all time best friends, their girl or boy friends. Many have gone through deaths, marriages, sicknesses, new babies born and more together. The memories and friends made over 6 years should never be underestimated and we don’t want that to end 😦 … imagine this happening to your favorite game!!
Visit www.playercampaigns.com and register in the forum!
Any support is forever appreciated and PLEASE spread the word.
Thank you,
majdi/simworldnews/the community
P.S you can comment on the article without registering.
EA Land and Test Center 3 are now facing an awkward bug that causes the objects to break (as shown left). This tricky bug has kept the developers to stay working on weekends. It has been announced on the 
EA-Land now has a whole new website. You can check it by visiting 
SimWorld News 