Community ManagerThank you for giving players the opportunity to share feedback on the new Services Update.
I recently returned to SimCity BuildIt after some time away, excited to continue working on my city, which has a population of around 810,000. As a mostly free-to-play player, I had spent a lot of time carefully designing my layout and trying to maximise my population within the limits available to me.
When I logged back in, almost every service category was suddenly in the red: power, water, sewage, waste management, police, fire, and health. At first, I was confused, but I soon realised this was due to a new update. I assumed upgrading my existing service buildings would solve the issue, but after spending around 350,000 simoleons, which was all I had, I had still not managed to fix even half of the problems.
I appreciate that a lot of service buildings have been provided for free, and I have used them, but even then, their output is too low and upgrading them is too expensive. I understand that upgrades do not have to happen instantly, and I am used to taking time to build up my city. However, at this point, the amount of simoleons required to upgrade and build the services I now need makes the process feel more discouraging than worthwhile.
Even with upgraded service buildings, my city is still falling short. Buildings are being abandoned, my happiness rating has dropped significantly, and the only realistic options seem to be either demolishing a large portion of my city or completely redesigning the layout just to fit in the required services. Either option would undo a huge amount of progress and time invested.
I understand that updates are intended to improve the game and add new challenges, but this change feels far too punishing, especially for long-term and free-to-play players. Instead of encouraging me to keep playing, it has made the game feel frustrating, unbalanced, and unrewarding.
Before this update, I was genuinely looking forward to returning to the game. Unfortunately, coming back and being met with punishment instead of nostalgia has made me decide to delete the game, unless the Services Update is significantly adjusted or reversed entirely.
I hope the team will take player feedback seriously and reconsider the impact this update has had on existing cities. Thank you again for the opportunity to share my thoughts.
Serious question - why are you thanking them for the "opportunity to give feedback" when they haven't responded to the hundreds of posts with people ALL GIVING THE SAME FEEDBACK for 2 months with no response, no changes - just crickets.
I agree with all your feedback as do most ppl that have posted here but if you notice - they don't respond, don't heed the feedback, don't revert back to things that worked or revise things based on all the feedback given. It's an echo chamber for players to complain that developers don't read or listen to.
It's performative so it looks like they care but clearly they don't and won't make changes based on player feedback. They only will make changes that will increase their profit.
I still get notifications to this post since i had replied awhile back, but i will say that i deleted sim city off my devices when nothing was done to change anything and it truly feels like i have so much of my life back. I would like to thank them for the upgrades and giving me the peace of mind that it was finally time to give the game up.
Community ManagerCommunity Manager
