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.
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a chapter EA opened deliberately. In November 2010 it followed Zynga into a five-year deal to use Facebook Credits, then spent the next two years buying its way onto the platform — including the roughly $35M KlickNation acquisition in December 2011 — while trading blows with Zynga over which publisher owned the Facebook audience, a rivalry charted in the head-to-head comparison from mid-2011.
The Sims Social was the flagship of that push, peaking at 10 million daily active users in late 2011. Retiring it barely two years later is an abrupt reversal, and the story travelled unusually wide for a game shutdown — picked up same-day by CNET, Ars Technica, Polygon, GeekWire and others. It lands amid unconfirmed reports that teen use of Facebook was declining, and days after the panned launch of Facebook Home.
First-order effects
- EA writes off the core of its Facebook portfolio — The Sims Social and other top titles go dark, stranding the player bases built since the 2010 Credits deal.
- Zynga loses its largest direct rival on the Facebook canvas, removing the competitive pressure that had defined both publishers' social strategies.
Second-order effects
- Facebook loses one of its biggest third-party game publishers' engagement and Credits revenue, weakening the platform pitch to remaining social-game developers just as its mobile hardware efforts draw criticism.
- Other studios that bought or built Facebook game operations face pressure to justify them, accelerating a pivot of development budgets toward mobile and standalone titles.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the web-based Facebook game canvas — the business that made Zynga and drew EA's acquisition spree — gives way to mobile-first distribution, leaving platform-dependent publishers exposed when a single channel's economics turn.
- Publisher strategy shifts from renting audiences inside social networks to owning distribution directly, a structural change in how big game companies allocate M&A and live-service spending.
The trend: Social gaming is migrating off Facebook's web canvas toward mobile, and EA's retreat shows even the biggest licensed-brands publishers will abandon a platform once its growth math stops working.