SimCity, the latest installment in the venerated city building simulation from Electronic Arts was indeed off to a rough start. The game needs to be connected to the EA servers at all times. If that is not the case, no cities can be built. No game can be played. The problem at hand though is, that EA’s servers have been crushed by the amount of players logging on, resulting in Sim City being unplayable for a majority of customers.

In response to this debacle, EA’s global community manager Marcel Hatam stated "If you regrettably feel that we left you down, you can of course request a refund for your order at http://help.origin.com/contact-us, though we are currently still in the process of resolving this issue."

Which only goes so far, since actually getting that refund is harder than it might seem, mostly because the user can request a refund any time, but that doesn’t mean EA has any obligations to go through with that request, as this angered customer had to find out. In this post, the customer service representative is not only refusing a refund, but also threatening the customer with banning of his Origin account, should he withdraw the transaction made to buy the game he cannot play.

Electronic Arts got some bad press this year, first with the inclusion of microtransactions in Dead Space 3, and now with this less than ideal game launch of what should be a huge title.