EA backs off from Facebook in a big way

In a surprise announcement, Electronic Arts today revealed that it is retiring a number of its biggest Facebook games, including The Sims Social. The Sims Social in particular has been extremely popular in the past, with 10 million daily active users recorded towards the end of 2011. However, as the game threatens to leave the top 100 DAUs rankings with somewhere over 500,000 DAUs according to App Data, EA has now made the decision to shut the game down. It is also retiring Pet Society (in the same ballpark for DAUs) and SimCity Social (which has between 100,000 and 500,000 DAUs, according to App Data.) EA says that while these games proved popular to begin with, "the number of players and amount of activity has fallen off." "For people who have seen other recent shutdowns of social games, perhaps this is not surprising," the statement added. Indeed, social games on Facebook aren't performing as well as they used to, with numerous developers now favoring mobile over browser games. Facebook recently said that it is looking to target core gamers in 2013, in a bid to become one of the more popular game platforms again. As for the aforementioned EA games, all three titles will go offline on June 14, 2013. The company's biggest games on Facebook will then be Solitaire Blitz and Bejeweled Blitz -- both games from its PopCap subsidiary. Notably, the company isn't offering any sort of refund on remaining in-game credit. Beverly Myshrall, senior community specialist at EA, posted on the official forums, "Players are encouraged to spend their remaining balance of SimCash in The Sims Social before the game is retired on June 14th. As of that date, any remaining SimCash left in the game will be invalid." [Correction: This article previously said The Sims Social currently had over 6 million DAUs -- that's the figure for MAUs. DAUs stand at somewhere over 500,000. Apologies for any confusion.]