New SimCity game stalled by server upgrades

The hotly anticipated internet computer game SimCity has been smacked with lacklustre reviews this weekafter servers quickly reached capacity, preventing virtualmayors from breaking ground on their newmetropolises.

Several reports indicated Friday that Amazon had alsotemporarily suspended sales of the Electronic Arts'city-building game, citing complaints from users, but it now appears to be available for purchase.

The latest in a series of followups to the original1989 game launched on Tuesday as part of aworldwide rollout, but setbacks have caused uproar in the tech world.

"It's pretty clear it's a completely messed-up launch," said video game and technology journalist Peter Nowak.

'Our plan is to continue to bring more servers online until we have enough to meet the demand, increase player capacity and let more people through the gates and into the game.' Kip Katsarelis

In a blog dated Thursday, SimCity senior producer Kip Katsarelis acknowledged that "server capacity is our biggest obstacle."

"Our plan is to continue to bring more servers online until we have enough to meet the demand, increase player capacity and let more people through the gates and into the game," said Katsarelis, adding that after the North American launch on Tuesday servers were full within hours.

It's not clear how many users are partof aserver, but Nowak says requiringpeopleplay thegame while connected to the internetis the root of the problem.

"Game companies are increasingly doing this to try and combat piracy," he said. "It's hurting innocent players far more than it's defeating bad actors."

• RELATED: Video game designer ordered to delete Montreal metro scene

Many people took to social media to express their frustration.

"Been playing about 2 hours of Tomb Raider while waiting for the #SimCityqueue to let me in. Feel like I paid $80 for a broken clock," tweeted one gamer.

"The problem isn't your servers, it's the fact that you unnecessarily have hundreds of thousands of players that don't want to play online still using up server capacity," another person posted in response to Katsarelis's blog.

Award-winning game

SimCity was the winner of 23PC Game Awards at the annual gamescon video games trade fair in Germany last August.Several of the game's features, however, have beenremotely turned off by EA as they patch issues.

"There was a time when you could buy a game on day one and be confident that it would work, but that's not the case anymore," said Nowak. "Game companies are increasingly shipping incomplete games, thinking that they can patch them up, add to them or fix them with downloads later."

For the time being, EA's updates on SimCity upgrades are being communicated through its blog, company forums and Twitter account.

"I can't wait to play it, but unfortunately, I'm going to,"Nowak said.