Earlier this month Electronics Arts more or less admitted their launch of SimCity 5 was a complete disaster, and as an apology to angry gamers, offered to give them a free game. For some reason they didn’t say which game or games that would be, just that a free game was going to be offered. They’ve finally come through with a list, and as Rollin guessed, it includes Battlefield 3, but that’s not the only game spurned SimCity players can get.
It’s not too late to cash in on the free game offer. If you’re willing to buy, install, activate, and put up with SimCity 5 by March 25th you get one free game. Whether that’s worth it or not is up to you. We’re not here to run your cost/benefit analysis for you, but it probably comes down to how much you’re willing to spend on a game that barely works to get a free one that you can just buy separately.
It also probably depends on the game, so here’s what’s on the table. The full list isn’t long, but it’s distinguished. Gamers can exchange their free game token for:
- Battlefield 3 (Standard Edition)
- Bejeweled 3
- Dead Space 3 (Standard Edition)
- Mass Effect 3 (Standard Edition)
- MOHW (Standard Edition)
- NFS Most Wanted (Standard Edition)
- Plants vs. Zombies
- SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition
Yup. That list includes SimCity 4 – the last fully operational SimCity game known to man. Which seems like an odd choice to include on a list of games you’re offering as apology for SimCity 5. EA says they selected these titles as an assortment of their top games, banking on there being something for everyone who bought SimCity 5.
So maybe SimCity 4 isn’t such an odd choice after all, since it’s being offered to people who want to play SimCity, but have discovered that while SimCity 5 does a lot of things, actually playing SimCity doesn’t appear to be one of them.
Maybe a better way to go about this would be to offer SimCity 5 as a free download to anyone buying one of these other games.
(via GamesRadar, image via Electronic Arts)
- Our own Rollin Bishop totally called Battlefield 3 being on this list
- EA and Ubisoft are making strange deals with their online stores
- EA says you need to be online to play SimCity 5, even though it’s untrue
