Advertisementĭespite these declines, it's a bit surprising to learn that EA doesn't consider it worthwhile to continue operating servers for games that still have millions of players. SimCity Social seems to have peaked at 10 million monthly players and has managed to hold on to just over one million of them less than a year after its launch. Similarly, The Sims Social rocketed to over 65 million monthly players just after its launch in 2011, only to drop to just over five million monthly players today, according to AppData. Still, that's a big drop-off for a game that was once selling 90 million virtual goods every day. Pet Society has been running since August 2008, which is practically geological time in the short history of social games, and it still manages to attract a million monthly players to this day. But some of the games EA is shutting down have had a pretty good run.

Indeed, the collapse of the social game market from its dizzying heights hasn't been surprising to anyone who's been paying attention. 'For people who have seen other recent shutdowns of social games, perhaps this is not surprising.' 'After millions of people initially logged in to play these games, the number of players and amount of activity has fallen off,' EA wrote in a blog post today. By this summer, there won't be a single active Playfish game available on Facebook. In addition, EA will also shutter the social extensions of its popular sports game brands Madden NFL SuperStars and NHL Superstars on May 14. EA has announced it will be shutting down three of its once-popular social games- SimCity Social, The Sims Social, and Pet Society-on June 14. Just over three years later, the investment looks a lot less prescient. After all, games like FarmVille were attracting tens of millions of players daily and seemed poised to upend the market for traditional pay-to-play gaming that had endured for decades. When EA paid over $300 million for social gaming powerhouse Playfish in late 2009, it probably seemed like a good investment in the future of gaming.

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