‘The Simpsons’ Is Discontinuing Its Most Popular Mobile Game After 12 Years
After serving the gaming enthusiasts of the Simpsons fandom faithfully for over a decade, Electronic Arts announced today that they will shut down the popular mobile game The Simpsons: Tapped Out and de-list it from the Android and Apple app stores on October 31st. It’s like an especially lame “Treehouse of Horror” plot line come to life.
The lifespan of The Simpsons: Tapped Out will invariably go down as a success in the history of branded, cash-in, freemium mobile games. Launched in early 2012, The Simpsons: Tapped Out took the setting, the color palette and the playful wit of Fox’s longest-running animated comedy and wrapped it up in a city-building mobile game in which players built and maintained their own vision of Springfield like a bunch of iPhone-wielding Joe Quimbys. The city-building genre of mobile games is — and was — a crowded category, but, with its built-in fanbase, its regular updates of seasonal items and quests and the liberal use of microtransactions, The Simpsons: Tapped Out exploded to a towering $130 million in revenue in just its first two years on the market.
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Twelve years later, however, EA itself is ready to tap out as they announced the end of the mobile game earlier today. Hopefully, the decision was only made in order to devote more developer resources toward Bonestorm II.
“The decision to end our twelve-year journey is an emotional one,” the remaining developers of The Simpsons: Tapped Out wrote on the game's official Facebook page as they announced the imminent end. “Together with our partners at The Simpsons™ and The Walt Disney company, we have delighted in bringing this game to you, the fans, and seeing how you’ve each built your own beloved versions of Springfield. It has been a remarkable journey, and we are grateful that we’ve been able to deliver 308 updates, 831 characters and including today’s final farewell 1,463 questlines. As our journey comes to a close, we offer our sincerest thanks to you, the players, who have made this all possible.”
The 72,000-player-strong The Simpsons: Tapped Out subreddit is understandably mournful at the news that their favorite mobile game will go the way of the flip phone, with one user offering their incredibly personal reason to grieve the end of the game. “I started playing because of my wife. She passed in 2019, and I used to visit her Springfield and reminisce,” the Redditor wrote. “If it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t still be playing, but I am so far up now it’s rather pointless now. However I will miss Tapped Out, and I will be sad that I can’t visit her Springfield because she was very creative. That part is the saddest.”
“I am kinda in the same situation,” another Tapped Out player responded. “I used to play the game with my dad so my town is full of memories linked to him, I wonder if there is a way I can at least keep visiting it, even if it’s all I can do. I’d like to ask the devs but I don’t know how.”
Hopefully, EA sees the emotional impact that Tapped Out has had on the Simpsons community and comes up with some way for these fans to preserve the unique and intimate memories they have of the game. After all, for as long as The Simpsons is still going, Springfield should feel like home to everyone.
