You know, I was going to argue against you on this, but looking back on the Studio Liverpool is shutting thread, it definitely feels like if it's one of the big 3 it'll bring in fans from other camps to... "comment".

For something like this, there's a small amount of people on this forum who have been gaming for years (particularly older PC games) with the memories to make an announcement like this very upsetting.  For anyone with only a passing interest, they haven't made anything worthwhile since 2004, arguably, so I can kinda understand the lukewarm response.

Now they can join Bullfrog, Origin, Westwood, Criterion, and many more in the graveyard.

You are probably right, and that is just sad.  This is probably the biggest gaming story of 2015 so far, and it seems like no one cares.

I was not and am not much of a PC gamer.  I play a few PC games here and there, but I mostly stick to consoles.  But I still know my gaming history well enough to know this is a huge deal.  Then again, I am 29, so I am probably considered an old man by video game standards.

I hate EA so much.

I also think the departure of Will Wright has something to do with it. If we were talking about EA shutting down a studio that "Dr. Wright" still helmed...

True.  Looking up the history of Maxis, I was surprised to find that they were purchased by EA all the way back in 1997.  That is only one year after the N64 came out.  I thought it was much more recent than that.  And Will Wright didn't leave until 2009.  Seems like EA actually did better with this acquisition than most that they do.  They still managed to fuck it up in the end though...

This is voodoo, I just got done watching a documentary on Will Wright. Never was a huge fan of the Sims but I understood it's premise. But by the look of the post, Sims will remain, so I guess not all is lost.

Good.
Maxis put so much behind pay walls and messed up Sim City beyond belief that they deserved to lose their jobs over it. The game industry has tolerated bad companies too often and these companies need to learn to do their job better.

I have a feeling that its the Big Wigs who told them to do that.  I highly doubt the developers of a game sit around and think "man we shoudl do this"

They want to make a great fun game that they can be proud of.  It's the exec's who force them to add things becuase they believe it will make profit.  Whether that will be some F2P shit or some social media aspects or if they cut the timeline of development in half, ect.  That isn't the developers, it would be EA top brass.