The Sims Social coming to China via Tencent

EA revealed today that it is bringing its popular social game, The Sims Social, to China via a new agreement with major Chinese online game developer and operator Tencent. The Sims Social launched on Facebook last year, and put a social spin on the classic The Sims franchise. The game quickly became popular with 50 million active users in its first month, overtaking Zynga's Farmville in daily active users. The Chinese version of the game will be known as Mo Ni Shi Guang, and will be available to play via Tencent's social network Open Platform. It is also being expanded to leverage the network's services, and localized both in terms of art and game design. This new version is being developed by EA's Playfish studio in Beijing. Earlier this month, EA's COO Peter Moore discussed with Gamasutra how the company was forced to "dive in" with social games, or risk being left behind.