After Darkspore was removed from Steam, due to ongoing connection issues rendering it unplayable for a large portion of its audience, the internet went wild with a forum moderator post on the game’s official forum proclaiming it “abandoned”. Despite EA changing the post quickly with assurance of future support, this obviously left people unsure.
EA moved quickly to try and minimize the damage done, and Darkspore is already back up on Steam. The company has also released statements more specifically addressing the original moderator post causing such concern. Aside from the assurance Darkspore will continue to be supported in the future, Electronic Arts also pointedly addressed the forum post, stating the moderator responsible for the post was not an employee of Maxis.
The lesson gaming companies will hopefully take from this is to recognize how quickly games requiring direct support from the developers can cause gamers to lose faith when they do not see signs of that support.
I wouldn’t count on the lesson being learned, however. The companies involved in this are Maxis and EA. If SimCity’s disastrous launch did not get the message across, who knows if anything ever will.
