EA shuts down SimCity social, other Facebook games

Electronic Arts is shutting down three of its biggest social games. The publisher announced that The Sims Social, SimCity Social, and Pet Society will all "retire" on June 14--SimCity Social is less than a year old, if you've been keeping track. EA says it has a special offer in store to help move uprooted players to PopCap's social properties.

"After millions of people initially logged in to play these games, the number of players and amount of activity has fallen off," EA's statement read. "For people who have seen other recent shutdowns of social games, perhaps this is not surprising."

All three were developed by social studio Playfish. Its games list has turned into a memorial, as Joystiq notes, with each game aside from Madden Social 13 either shut down or scheduled for closure. And Madden Social 13 is an EA Tiburon project.

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Electronic Arts purchased Playfish in 2009 for $275 million, but is refusing to comment on the studio's future. It doesn't look good, given the string of layoffs at EA's Montreal social games studio and its customer support center in Galway, Ireland.