Leave EA, Maxis!

Once upon a time we had two great series to look forward to . These was Sim City and Sims (well Sims for my sister).

Last year EA totally destroyed the reputation of Sim City by forcing DRM, removing features, and making smaller maps.
This year, EA is doing the same thing with The Sims 4.

I can help to believe Maxis is really trying to make a great game.. but EA tells them to 'restrict' themselves , in turns of creativity and building capacity. Why? Simple! DLC! If you forced to play in a small playfield you are more likely to want better 'toys' every so often.. Which brings EA millions in profit.

if there is 1 million Sims players. And each of these buys 2 toys (DLC) . EA makes alot more profit then selling the game.
This is what is scary, this is why we shouldn't support ANYTHING EA is doing... EA is making microtransactions (Mobile stuff) a must-to-have into expensive PC games. In these series that we love so dearly.

Its cruel. And I seriously think any game developers (like Maxis) should leave EA, and lets someone else publish their games.

Thoughts?

So they're in jail. Can't the development team leave EA and start anew one then?
I mean this is who Maxis is working with ... and the links are from EAs Wikipedia site!
http://consumerist.com/2013/04/09/e...-history-wins-title-for-second-year-in-a-row/
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/09/ea-named-worst-company-in-america-again

I'm going to wait and see what happens in the coming months before I make any judgement. Absolutely loved The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 under Maxis, then when The Sims 3 was being developed by 'The Sims Studio', I didn't really know how it was gonna go. Enjoyed The Sims 3, but it just lacked things that I felt TS/TS2 had to offer. Now that Maxis is back developing The Sims 4, I'm excited to see if it'll go back to the days of TS/TS2, or if it'll continue where 'The Sims Studio' left off. Hoping it's not the latter.

However, I do agree that the amount of DLC created was ridiculous, I never bought into any of it, because it just seemed like a waste of money to me. Why not just include it in a Stuff Pack? I see absolutely no need for Expansion Packs, Stuff Packs and then DLC to be thrown on top of that too, it's totally overkill.

Some reviews/articles about The Sims 4.
Warning: Abusive language in the last video review

http://ts4news.com/post/94541924952/89-features-missing-from-the-sims-4 - 89 Features Missing from The Sims 4

If all of Maxis refused to work for EA, they would all be fired and there would no longer be The Sims, since EA owns the rights to the franchise.

So jailed with handcuffs. ...

@Cynel: I agree that, some time ago EA was a great publisher. But its scary how last years development has been for Maxis. I heard alot of Sims fans disliking Sims 4 - because the whole concept of Sims is gone! It's an emotional movie more then a game now. Im still glad it wasn't DRM as with Sim City. And my points is also to warn people that expect the same experience they had with TS3. It's alot of features that isn't there anymore. However they probably are more skeptic now, after that disaster with Sim City.

I agree to a certain extent. Emotions are the main selling point for this game, but say that emotions wasn't in this, then what would have been the selling point instead? The Sims was obviously an entirely new game, The Sims 2 then focused on Sims going from birth to death and The Sims 3's main feature was the open world, being able to walk across town without any loading screens, as well as story progression. They have to come up with something unique otherwise it'd just be exactly the same game as before, just with different graphics. Maybe they have paid too much attention to emotions and not enough to other things, but that's just the way it is unfortunately.

I..I just saw this stream on Twitch @ Sims 4. Have to say what I saw wasn't really what others been showing me. The game looks really fun to play. Maybe I was wrong.

I'm still on the fence, even after buying the game. It's weird (and not in a good way lol), sometimes I think I have even less control over my sims than in the previous games. There's so much happening while playing that after a while it gets confusing. I love the looks and some of the gameplay but I don't love the game as a whole.

Try watching this stream - Hip_Rose : http://www.twitch.tv/spamfish -
Its really shows the FUN parts of Sims 4

Thanks, I will.

The people from Maxis would need to all start a new company, get enough money to buy the Studio from EA, and even more money buy the rights from the games. Taking in consideration that we are talking about a franchise that achived the record of "best selling game of all history" twice, it is wont be cheap.

Or convince another company to buy it from EA, as well as Thesims itself.But taking in consideration how greedy and desesperate EA has turned into in the last years, i doubt EA will make such deal.

I love a game series called "Black&White" where you are a god. When Lionhead studios made the game, they were part of EA, as well as the sequel, Black&White2 but then those were all sold together with the studio to Mycrosoft Games, yet, for some reason, EA retains "Black&White2 - Batle of the Gods : Expansion Pack" on it game list at it main site, wich may mean they still have rights for this particular game, probably that is the reason why Lionhead didnt do a Black&White3 so far.

And i am not sugesting that EA sell it to mycrosoft either. That company is worse than EA. After what it did to Age of Empires franchise i got very disgusted with Microsoft as a game company, even trough i still prefer it operational system.

Will Wright was the big mind behind the best Sim games ever, Thesims1 and Thesims2. But now he left and created his own company that does nothing. I myself still want to play Thesims4, of course, it needs more patches, but i want to play it.

I will ever have my Thesims2 in any case.

@V12creator : Reading your text I find it incredible that publishers not game developers decide what kind of game that should be developt. --- Its really scary . And yes, big hate on Microsoft if they was the reasons Age of Empires died... I and my dad LOVED AOE! -- Never has there been a more relaxing rts game! .. apart from sim city perhaps.

Unfortunately, as others have said, Maxis can't just leave EA as they own both the studio and the license for The Sims. I think there's been one case where a studio bought itself back from the publisher it was under but I don't know how common such a thing is.

Honestly I do wish it was the studios and not the publishers that had control over the direction of the games they oversee but one of the big blocks for that is that it's the publishers that provide quite a big chunk funding for many of these games. Another publisher could attempt to buy Maxis and the license from EA but, while it's not one of their top moneymakers, it's still a popular game series and so I doubt EA would be willing to let it go.

EDIT: Also, I really have to agree about AOE. I didn't play it myself too much but my brother used to love it.