No refund for copies of SimCity bought on Origin

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SimCity launches today! A game where you get to build metropolises, grow a city and then unleash all manner of hell on it. Well, it’s what I would do at least, seeing as how I still regularly brick up my Sims in their homes and leave them to die a horrible death. The thing is, SimCity has had a very rocky launch so far, as the always-online game has been hit with an Error 37 level of denied service and crammed servers. A lot of folks have thrown their hands in the air and taken back their game copy to get a refund. It’s just a pity that anyone who bought the game on Origin, is pretty much screwed.

It’s been a bad time for EA so far. Dead Space has devolved into an angry war of words, and SimCity is forcing plenty of players to sit down and wait to have an opportunity to play a game that they bought, of up to half an hour at a time. Or risk getting banned. On Tuesday, EA went onto their forums to say: “If you regrettably feel that we let you down, you can of course request a refund for your order at [Origin's "contact us" page], though we’re currently still in the process of resolving this issue.”

Since then though as VG247 discovered, that comment has been removed. That doesn’t mean that Origin adopters of the game won’t be able to get a refund, but when the terms of service include phrases such as “special mitigating services”, you know that it’s going to be an uphill battle all the way. With more and more PC gamers getting rightfully pissed off,

Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw issued the following statement to Kotaku:

Thousands of players across the world are playing and having a good experience – in fact, more than 700,000 cities have been built by our players in just 24 hours. But many are experiencing server instability and consequently, the rollout in North America has been challenging. It’s also now evident that players across Europe and Asia are experiencing the same frustration.

Our priority now is to quickly and dramatically increase the number and stability of our servers and, with that, the number of players who can simultaneously access the game. We added servers today, and there will be several more added over the weekend. We’re working as hard as possible to make sure everyone gets to experience the amazing game we built in SimCity.

And don’t expect any mercy this side either for the game. With the rest of Europe going online to play the game today, us included, those servers are going to get full real quickly. And thanks to a culture of piracy, we all know just how impossible it is to return a PC game that isn’t exactly operating at maximum capacity.

Might be worth waiting this storm out, until EA gets their act together. Welcome to the wonderful world of always online!