With more than ten years between titles, last week’s release of the computer game SimCity was a big deal. Things didn’t pan out so well, though. The new SimCity requires you to always be connected to the Internet in order to play, but EA completely underestimated how many people would try to access the game’s servers. Things got so bad on the server side that on the day SimCity was released, thousands of people couldn’t play the game and thousands more unable to even download it to their computers. EA rushed to add more servers and removed what they called “non-critical gameplay features” to lighten the server load. Amazon even stopped selling the game with a note describing the problem and saying it didn’t know when EA would be able to fix the issue. I guess EA wasn’t really thinking … it should have just displayed an error message that due to an Internet disaster, your city had been destroyed. It’s not that from what actually happened.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.