10 Beloved Video Game Studios That Didn't Deserve To Be Shut Down

Creating a phenomenon in both SimCity and The Sims, Maxis took the world by storm in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Identifying a gap in the market and going for it, the studio's releases broke out of the core gaming scene and quickly became a staple of every family home.

After a steady stream of success though, despite initially being able to branch off to create their own unique experiences in the early years, Maxis became limited to working on The Sims full time under their new publisher EA.

With the excitement surrounding the main series wearing off after new releases didn't really push the franchise forward and the casual market moving on, Maxis' focus shifted onto a series they had ignored for too long: SimCity.

Unfortunately, EA had the idea of tying a new entry in the series to a DRM system that always required an internet connection to run. A contentious decision already, things only got worse when the system effectively broke the game at launch, making it virtually unplayable for everyone in the weeks following its release.

Since that disastrous release, the core Maxis studio has shut down for good, while the name lives on as a licensor for EA's mobile division.