Officials from Electronic Arts have announced that massively multiplayer online community EA-Land is to close on August 1st, 2008. The game, which began life as The Sims Online before being rebranded and updated in February, was first launched in 2002.

A blog entry on the EA-Land website from Electronic Arts’ Luc Barthelet commented that “decisions such as these are never easy and the rationale for closing EA-Land is particularly complex”.

“We would like to thank the community for trusting us over the last 10 months and enabling this opportunity. A special thank you to the few thousand who have been with the game since the original beta!" said Barthelet.

“The virtual worlds are still in their infancy, I sincerely hope we will have the opportunity to be creative together again,” he concluded.

Subscription billing for users will be closed immediately, giving sixty days of free play on the service until its close. Paying subscribers as of April 29th, 2008 will be offered either $15 off any game on the EA online store or three months of free subscription time for Club Pogo.

[The preceding article by David Jenkins originally appeared on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]