EA has shut down Maxis Emeryville, the main Maxis studio and longrunning developer behind SimCity and Spore, among other games.
I've been hearing rumblings about this for a few days now, but official word comes via designer Guillaume Pierre, who wrote on Twitter this afternoon that the studio would be shutting down:
Well it was a fun 12 years, but it's time to turn off the lights and put the key under the door. #RIPMaxisEmeryville
— Guillaume Pierre (@MaxisGuillaume) March 4, 2015
We've reached out to EA for confirmation. It's unclear what this means for the future of SimCity or other Maxis games, but EA has used the brand for a number of studios.
Originally founded in 1987, Maxis was best known for the Sim franchise, which began with Will Wright's SimCity and expanded to include a number of other games, including the popular The Sims series, which is handled by a separate developer called The Sims Studio. In 2013, Maxis released an online reboot of SimCity that was plagued with all sorts of problems, which may have been what led to this final closure. Neither SimCity nor the recent release of The Sims 4 performed very well, according to a person familiar with goings-on at the studio.
You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.
EmoticonEmoticon