SimCity. SimCity. SimCity? Ah, SimCity.

The game's developer, Maxis, issued a statement on Friday evening about the state of SimCity, and adopted an apologetic tone that would have probably benefited the company more had it done so earlier.

“So what went wrong?” said Maxis senior VP Lucy Bradshaw in a blog post. “The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta. OK, we agree, that was dumb, but we are committed to fixing it.”

An update posted yesterday said the server issues were progressing in the right direction.

“We’ve improved our server response time by 40x, we’ve doubled the number of players in the game at the same time and reduced server down times,” said Bradshaw. “The situation is good, but not good enough. And since my boss is one of the negatively affected (!) - we’re still driving hard to get everyone online, playing together, and no hitches.”

Maxis extended an olive branch to its angered community with promise of a free Electronic Arts-produced game. Players should receive an email about redeeming that on March 18.

The studio has also pushed back on the criticism against its publisher.

“Hey, this is on Maxis,” said the company in a response on Twitter. “EA does not force design upon us. We own it, we are working 24/7 to fix it, and we are making progress.”

The improvements are ongoing, and keep us updated about your experience in the comments.