Electronic Arts has announced that they will be giving away free games to those affected by the SimCity launch disaster. For those who have bought and activated SimCity, expect to receive an email from EA on March 18 telling you how to redeem your free game.

Maxis General Manager Lucy Bradshaw admits in a blogpost that EA is “dumb” for letting the servers crash despite the fact that they knew how many people were going to be playing.

“A lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in beta,” she said.

“In the last 48 hours we increased server capacity to 120 percent. It’s working – the number of people who have gotten in and built cities has improved dramatically. The number of disrupted experiences has dropped by roughly 80 percent.”

Bradshaw goes on to boast that despite the shaky launch, SimCity is doing well in all major markets. “The consensus among critics and players is that this is fundamentally a great game.

“But SimCity is made to be played online, and if you can’t get a stable connection, you’re NOT having a good experience. So we’re not going to rest until we’ve fixed the remaining server issues,” she added.