As SimCity server woes continue worldwide, EA has taken the rather drastic step of disabling some of the game’s non-crucial services.

The game’s cheetah speed, along with leaderboards, achievements, and region filters have all been disabled.

“We are continuing to do everything we can to address the server issues,” wrote a SimCity community manager.

“In the meantime, so that we can give you as good an experience as possible, we are in the process of deploying a hotfix to all servers.

“Disabling these features will in no way affect your core gameplay experience. Getting you playing is our absolute highest priority.”

SimCity senior producer Kip Katsarelis said that the company was adding more servers as soon as possible.

"We are hitting a number of problems with our server architecture which has seen players encountering bugs and long wait times to enter servers,” she wrote on the game’s forums.

“This is, obviously, not the situation we wanted for our launch week, and we want you to know that we are putting everything we have at resolving these issues."

GLOBAL PROBLEMS

The Australasian servers were available to Australia yesterday and New Zealand since midnight, but appear to be suffering the same problems as their US, Russian, and Asian counterparts.

A patch was applied this morning "to address some player issues that have been reported overnight", but as it stands the game is still inaccessible for many.

Those who did manage to start a game before the patch was applied are reporting that their cities were deleted.

"We are aware of the current server issues and the team are working to fix this. Please stay tuned to @SimCity for updates!" read a tweet from EA Australia.

After nearly two hours of rejoining server queues, we were able to get to the game’s main menu, but the game will not start, simply offering the following message: “Unable to load city. Please try again.”

“We are working on the servers 24/7 - expect performance fluctuations. Our fans are our number one priority. Thank you for your patience,” read a tweet from the SimCity account.

NO REFUNDS

Despite a statement to the contrary early this week, EA is not giving out refunds due to the problematic servers just yet.

Earlier this week EA's Origin global community manager Marcel Hatam said, "If you regrettably feel that we let you down, you can of course request a refund for your order.”

However, it now appears that is not the case.

According to Develop, customers can claim refunds in “exceptional circumstances”, but when asked whether connection issues for the always online title came under that description, a customer service representative told the website “not right now”.

“If that were to come about, it would be announced widely. I have no idea if that will even come to be, or any other information about it,” they added.

AMAZON BACKS OUT

SimCity is no longer able to be purchased from Amazon.

Its product page simply states that it is “currently unavailable”.

The game is still available on EA’s own Origin service, however.