Electronic Arts (EA -1.09%) is shutting down some of its games on Facebook (META -0.28%).
EA will take down The Sims Social come June. Pet Society and SimCity Social will also be retired.
All of the games still have decent-sized audiences. Facebook claims that 5 million people have fired up The Sims Social over the past month, though daily active users are closer to 500,000. The other two games weren't as popular, but they were still attracting hundreds of thousands of daily users.
Critical mass is a big number for online games that are difficult to monetize; however, just as Zynga (ZNGA) shut down PetVille, Mafia Wars 2, and several of its once-popular games late last year, there's a bigger price to pay than the costs to maintain games that are falling out of favor. There are only so many times that players will get burned before they stop trusting Facebook developers.
In this video, Rick breaks down the big mistake that EA and Zynga are making.
