EA Shuts Down Another Famous Studio
The Emoryville branch of Maxis has now been shut down. Maxis was the developer that defined casual PC gaming in the 1990’s. They invented SimCity, SimEarth, The Sims and basically every single thing that had the word “sim” in it.
Maxis was purchased by Electronic Arts in 1997, but it was a different EA: a much smaller and, presumably, much less corrupt EA. In recent years the megacorporation has gained a bad reputation for buying hit studios, micromanaging the talent away from them, putting out subpar sequels and then shutting them down when the results don’t sell.
This wasn’t quite the situation with Maxis, as they’ve been bedfellows with EA for nearly twenty years with no problems, until the parent company metamorphosed into the form we know it as today. The most recent release to come out of that partnership, a new SimCity for the PC in 2013, was legendarily shoddy. The Digital Rights Management was so strict that the game required a constant connection to the Internet just to function — which everybody noticed because EA’s servers instantly went down upon release, rendering SimCity a nonfunctional purchase for its first two weeks. It resulted in horrible press and, consequently, horrible sales. And as per EA’s MO, the smaller guy got the blame for following the bigger guy’s directions.
It’s also important to note here: Maxis itself is not being closed, as it now exists in several locations. But the Emoryville studio, the one people associate most with the brand, will not exist for EA to kick around any longer. We will still get Sims and SimCity games in the foreseeable future, but caveat emptor in case you buy one.