Review Insights · App Store
SimCity BuildIt
Electronic Arts · 83,068 ratings · ★ 4.1
4.1
★★★★★
83,068 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 36 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"game"
23 negative reviews mention this · 64% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Game is good, but no more. Why did you bring update with the Service 2.0? This is utterly greedy and a disappointment to many mayors who have been playing your game for a long time, now, this is just unbearably unenjoyable." - Eugene Cara
2
"money"
11 negative reviews mention this · 31% of all complaints
★★★★★ "EA destroyed a good game. TrackTwenty and EA ruined a good game that I have played for 10 years. The last year they have over complicated the game with stupid stores that added more junk to make and store. Added multiple currencies and exchange conversions at horrib…" - Whatever7967
3
"playing"
9 negative reviews mention this · 25% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Game is good, but no more. Why did you bring update with the Service 2.0? This is utterly greedy and a disappointment to many mayors who have been playing your game for a long time, now, this is just unbearably unenjoyable." - Eugene Cara
4
"been"
8 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Game is good, but no more. Why did you bring update with the Service 2.0? This is utterly greedy and a disappointment to many mayors who have been playing your game for a long time, now, this is just unbearably unenjoyable." - Eugene Cara
5
"every"
7 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Battery Drain. Can’t play because it destroys my battery. Get warning every time I play for more than a couple minutes that my phone is protecting itself. Obvious the game developers are clueless." - Andy-1-2-3-4
6
"years"
7 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "EA destroyed a good game. TrackTwenty and EA ruined a good game that I have played for 10 years. The last year they have over complicated the game with stupid stores that added more junk to make and store. Added multiple currencies and exchange conversions at horrib…" - Whatever7967
7
"impossible"
6 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Lagging is terrible!. EA is killing this game…so confusing and convoluted…new currencies every month, now trains, challenges…….too complicated. Everything is made to advanced based on money The lagging is too much, is almost impossible to play." - @@Rikysara
8
"update"
5 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Game is good, but no more. Why did you bring update with the Service 2.0? This is utterly greedy and a disappointment to many mayors who have been playing your game for a long time, now, this is just unbearably unenjoyable." - Eugene Cara
9
"been playing"
5 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Game is good, but no more. Why did you bring update with the Service 2.0? This is utterly greedy and a disappointment to many mayors who have been playing your game for a long time, now, this is just unbearably unenjoyable." - Eugene Cara
10
"changes"
5 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "They are ruining this game. This was an amazing game until recent changes. The game freezes every few minutes, utilities have to be upgraded constantly and cheat code use in wars make this game a terrible choice now. Beware and do not spend money." - WM29617
11
"players"
5 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Game WAS GREAT!. They made inexplicable changes that forced players to use hard earned money to repair things that didn’t need repairing." - $androd8888
12
"anymore"
5 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Not fun anymore. They let hackers take over the war aspect of the game!! And refuse to block them from cheating!!" - TerryNGaby
📋 All 36 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Battery Drain
Can’t play because it destroys my battery. Get warning every time I play for more than a couple minutes that my phone is protecting itself. Obvious the game developers are clueless.
Sold out
Cumbersome. Too many adds
EA destroyed a good game
TrackTwenty and EA ruined a good game that I have played for 10 years. The last year they have over complicated the game with stupid stores that added more junk to make and store. Added multiple currencies and exchange conversions at horrible rates so you play more and more for fewer prizes. In CoM, Tier 38 used to give 1400 SimCash. Which got reduced to 550. Now it is reduced to 150 SimCash. EA expects you to pay real money to even have a chance to win a few crummy prizes.
Always room for improvement
The Latest update Is Just… awful.. Glitch Glitch Glitch ever since trains hQ..
You can’t even load a train without it tapping back to the map.. you try to load a train, or even drag and fill a factory with steel, and the game glitches and taps back to the map.
Constantly need to restart the game! Close the app fully and restart. It just freezes and loses connection with server.
TO MANY ADS!!!!
Game could use More - The inventory list needs organization! Can’t find anything.. now you have special effects buildings, theme buildings, seasonal and holiday buildings.. I don’t remember all of them.. In every category… you did NOTHING with SPACE after introduction! - and in the 2nd ever space season.. No Moon rocks/land! Where’s that? - You’ve Never done a Moon design contest.. where is your creative concept!
you need to be able to open up more land, BEACH, and MOUNTAINS. I’ve been playing game for 4 years and I have maxed out all beach, mountain & Land.. and I STILL can’t open the last Suburb region city. - But that said the Game needs to create 2-3 more region cities, and make it easier to open regions, More Factories!!
MAKE 2 new suburbs!
NEED MORE LAND IN EVERY SUBURB AND CENTRAL CITY AND MAKE SUBURBS EASIER TO OPEN!!!
the Design concept Needs A Lot of work- Bridges to Nowhere! - Joe Hart People even submitting these designs?! people submitting designs that don’t have functional streets, or no streets at all connected to a bridges. or have a goal in the design process to Cover the entire map.. every square.. water, flowers, trees, mountains, houses, parks, transportation, education… cover the map! - this Game could be So much more!
You can’t even load a train without it tapping back to the map.. you try to load a train, or even drag and fill a factory with steel, and the game glitches and taps back to the map.
Constantly need to restart the game! Close the app fully and restart. It just freezes and loses connection with server.
TO MANY ADS!!!!
Game could use More - The inventory list needs organization! Can’t find anything.. now you have special effects buildings, theme buildings, seasonal and holiday buildings.. I don’t remember all of them.. In every category… you did NOTHING with SPACE after introduction! - and in the 2nd ever space season.. No Moon rocks/land! Where’s that? - You’ve Never done a Moon design contest.. where is your creative concept!
you need to be able to open up more land, BEACH, and MOUNTAINS. I’ve been playing game for 4 years and I have maxed out all beach, mountain & Land.. and I STILL can’t open the last Suburb region city. - But that said the Game needs to create 2-3 more region cities, and make it easier to open regions, More Factories!!
MAKE 2 new suburbs!
NEED MORE LAND IN EVERY SUBURB AND CENTRAL CITY AND MAKE SUBURBS EASIER TO OPEN!!!
the Design concept Needs A Lot of work- Bridges to Nowhere! - Joe Hart People even submitting these designs?! people submitting designs that don’t have functional streets, or no streets at all connected to a bridges. or have a goal in the design process to Cover the entire map.. every square.. water, flowers, trees, mountains, houses, parks, transportation, education… cover the map! - this Game could be So much more!
Stay away from
Extremely slow lag times
Greedy app
Getting too greedy and too many ads and offers. Nickel and dime the hell out of you….type of app
No change.
Still sucks, still playing
Same …
No change.
Still sucks, still playing
Same …
They are ruining this game
This was an amazing game until recent changes. The game freezes every few minutes, utilities have to be upgraded constantly and cheat code use in wars make this game a terrible choice now. Beware and do not spend money.
Put it back like it was.
The game is horrible now and I do not even play or spend money on it like I used to. The constant pop ups and rebuilds needed are ridiculous.
Dan
Game constantly freezes. Stop adding enhancement and fix the slow response time
New update ruined the game
I’ve been playing for years and the latest update is such a money grab I might just delete the game.
Lagging is terrible!
EA is killing this game…so confusing and convoluted…new currencies every month, now trains, challenges…….too complicated. Everything is made to advanced based on money
The lagging is too much, is almost impossible to play.
The lagging is too much, is almost impossible to play.
Game experience
Considering quitting with all the unsupported changes. It’s a shame that this is no longer enjoyable. :/
Constant lag
What was once an enjoyable experience has become a frustrating one. The game constantly freezes. You can see everything stop and start several times every few minutes. You can never work seamlessly. It’s happened other times in the past, but it was always resolved. This time it has been going on for weeks if not months and apparently it’s the new normal. If the game ever starts to run smoothly again, I’d add stars.
2 long
Most games use their own game time like 10 sec for 1 in game minute but this uses real time and making items take too long to make and this game is very p2w as some things cost thousands of sim cash which is basically impossible to get without paying money
Game WAS GREAT!
They made inexplicable changes that forced players to use hard earned money to repair things that didn’t need repairing.
Simcity crash it
Sine the last 2 updates this is the only app on my phone or tablet that consistantly crashes. Im beyond fed up of deleting and reinstalling…..done
Hate the updates!
Too many pop ups at the beginning of the game. Last update required updating all the police, fire, hospitals, water and waste plants which took all the simoleons that took me years to save and I still don’t have them all updated. I have been playing this game for probably over 10 years and I believe I am getting close to calling it quits with all the stupid updates!!!
Really buggy and micro transaction heavy
Their is a major bug where positive values for utilities think they are negative and ruin their cities it’s supper laggy and storage heavy
Lost city
I had several city’s built and lost everything having to start over because no one would help recover my city’s I had going
Money Grab
Fans of Sim City, don’t waste your time. It’s just a money grab to actually make the game playable. Very disappointing. Feels cheap and greedy.
Not fun anymore
They let hackers take over the war aspect of the game!! And refuse to block them from cheating!!
Obscene money grab
Originally, there were ads to help you do the tasks to win the prizes. Now watching ads IS a task, and the prizes are tickets to do more tasks. Many of the seasonal objects are impossible to obtain unless you pay a ton of money, and the weekly prizes are repeats of stuff we’ve seen in previous seasons. The global market is flooded with junk nobody wants, like mountain expansion.
Never gets fixed
Is anybody ever gonna fix the crashing and lag problems in this game?
Disappointed
Go back to basics
Full of cheaters and scams
The game is complete junk. Global market is absolutely worthless, nothing but the same cities and same products. Half the time you don’t get credit for completing tasks. Then when you actually want to spend money it errors out and you can’t buy the items you want to. So you can’t even buy items you need, ridiculous. Same rewards for attacking cities. However, no matter what players say or who you say it to at customer support, it’s ALWAYS the players fault never the games. They claim the game never makes any mistakes. LAUGHABLE!! They charge ridiculous prices to buy stuff now.
It’s so sad, I have played this game since it came out and it has increasingly just gotten worse. And now it’s to the point where I’m considering deleting the game, it’s not worth the hassle anymore.
It’s so sad, I have played this game since it came out and it has increasingly just gotten worse. And now it’s to the point where I’m considering deleting the game, it’s not worth the hassle anymore.
Game is a mane grabbing pos
If I could give it 0 stars, I would. I’ve been playing for over 8 years and I remember when it was fair and so much fun. The whole thing is designed for players to pay real$. Don’t start unless you love to lose to real $ players. The designers insist that you watch ads which may or may not generate rewards; in fact, the ads might crash the game.
The game crashes multiple times a day; there is no quality control. Every new thing they introduce just causes more headaches. It’s a shame that a fun game should have lost so much of what made it fun
The game crashes multiple times a day; there is no quality control. Every new thing they introduce just causes more headaches. It’s a shame that a fun game should have lost so much of what made it fun
Cheating Ruins the Game
There is so much cheating that goes on in the game’s wars, especially once you reach higher levels. EA does nothing about it. The game is fun for new players but frustrating going up against obvious hackers
Not fun anymore.
Used to be fun until they changed the services.
Game is good, but no more
Why did you bring update with the Service 2.0? This is utterly greedy and a disappointment to many mayors who have been playing your game for a long time, now, this is just unbearably unenjoyable.
connection failures too often
playing getting impossible. Constant connection error no. 17.
please fix it!
please fix it!
Getting worse
Things just get worse and worse. Things change with no explanation.
It is now impossible to figure out what to do next. Too many money alternatives that I have no idea why I would want to or how to generate that type of coinage. Cant figure out railroads at all. Went from little attention to too complicated and involved really fast
Old critique:
So many potential points for improvement. They just basically leave it the way it is. Any changes are very slight and make things different, but not necessarily better.
It is now impossible to figure out what to do next. Too many money alternatives that I have no idea why I would want to or how to generate that type of coinage. Cant figure out railroads at all. Went from little attention to too complicated and involved really fast
Old critique:
So many potential points for improvement. They just basically leave it the way it is. Any changes are very slight and make things different, but not necessarily better.
Update ruined it
I have really enjoyed playing this game for a while now, but whatever this recent update was, the three cities I’ve been building are falling apart. I don’t understand how services that I carefully placed and organized houses around now need major updates that cost simoleons to the point that I can’t keep up and all the buildings are being abandoned. It means I can’t focus on building my cities and doing challenges, I’ve spent all my time just trying to keep up with the services and it’s like bailing water out of a sinking boat. Sadly, I’m done. The rapidity with which it’s all fallen apart is wild and not fun at all. I thought about trying to start a whole new city, but I’ve spent years on these cities and it’s too demoralizing.
Battery killer
It’s fun but kills your battery health. My batteries max cap keeps dropping. Overheating is a big problem. There an issue when I level up I can’t touch speech bubbles otherwise they stick and won’t clear even through a restart of iPad mini.
Not as good anymore
SimCity built it has been a favorite game for many years but changes to the reward system leading me to consider stop playing. COM tasks have become difficult and rewards are not worth it. Hackers dominate the high levels forcing legitimate players to lower levels but problem seems to have decreased. There is so much loading at startup that the game lags. The good news is the game continues to work out the bugs loading the new content. As long as they look at each change and ask “will this change make the game harder, or will it make it more enjoyable?” The correct answer will keep players active in the game.
New content has made the game very laggy on iPad which has made trying to make quick attacks almost impossible in war segment. When requesting help on lagging, which has not been a Problem in previous years, the response was all of my devices need to be upgraded to the newest versions. Not going to happen. They will just lose players. Seems like too much bloated content.
New content has made the game very laggy on iPad which has made trying to make quick attacks almost impossible in war segment. When requesting help on lagging, which has not been a Problem in previous years, the response was all of my devices need to be upgraded to the newest versions. Not going to happen. They will just lose players. Seems like too much bloated content.
Annoying Glitch
On every service, my capacity is bigger than my demand, but one building doesn’t have any of those services. When I go to the Government section, all these services’ logos are red. The game is not fun anymore due to this glitch. I had fun while it worked though. This game would be 5 stars if not for this glitch. Please fix this, I want to enjoy Simcity again!
Customize
I want to Customize my own character
Sentiment summary
77%
Positive (4-5★)
7%
Neutral (3★)
16%
Negative (1-2★)