Electronic Arts continues to expand its Origin Access service with a bevy of new games. The newest titles to join the Vault, making them permanently accessible to subscribers, includes Mad Max, Pillars of Eternity: Hero Edition and Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Mad Max comes from Avalanche Studios and is a fairly above average open world game that combines brawling with car combat. Pillars of Eternity is Obsidian’s critically and commercially computer RPG that helped it surge back from the brink. Torment: Tides of Numenera comes from inXile Entertainment, the minds behind the Wasteland series.

Of course, there are five more including Prison Architect, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Virginia, Ember and Spore. Seeing Brothers makes sense, considering its creator Josef Fares developed A Way Out thanks to the EA Originals label. Similarly, Spore was developed by Maxis and published by EA.

Origin Access retails for a measly $5 per month or $30 per year (which works out to just $2.50 per month for 12 months). The Vault now encompasses titles like Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Witness, the Batman Arkham Trilogy, Titanfall 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Unravel and much more. The service also provides access to early timed betas of upcoming games along with discounts on EA digital content.

In what is now a trend for EA, another classic, long time influential studio has been shuttered by them today. Maxis, the studio that was originally formed by WillW right (Wright left Maxis and EA a few years ago), and is behind such classics as SimCity, The Sims, and Spore, is officially being closed.

“Today we are consolidating Maxis IP development to our studios in Redwood Shores, Salt Lake City, Helsinki and Melbourne locations as we close our Emeryville location,” an EA representative said in a statement.

Personally, this announcement has left me feeling completely heartbroken- like so many others, I too grew up playing SimCity and The Sims. These were very important games to me, and to see their developer gutted like this… it’s depressing.

EA, of course, has a history of buying studios, and then shutting them down like this. Other past notable examples like this include Origin, Black Box, Mythic, Bullfrog, Westwood, and Pandemic.

In this case, however, EA has assured us that the Maxis label will ‘live on.’

Fat lot of good will that do.

“Spore’s biggest issues was that the play at each stage was fairly shallow because the team was making five games at once. (At one point, Will described each of the game’s five stages as light versions of classics – cell is like Pac-Man, creature is Diablo, tribe is Populous, civilization is Civilization, and space is Masters of Orion.) However, making five different games at once is a bad idea; making one good game is usually hard enough.

“Each of the five stages had different controls, different interfaces, different nouns, different verbs, different goals, and so on. Some effort was made, of course, to share ideas and elements across stages; however, the compromises involved often watered down what was supposed to make each stage distinct in the first place.

“For example, each stage required a friendly means of engaging with other entities; in the creature stage, this mechanic became dancing for other creatures to make friends while, in the civilization stage, this mechanic translated into attacking other cities with music instead of bullets.

“Neither mechanic was the best idea for its own individual stage, and the justification was high-level consistency. Thus, the powers of ten idea put the team in a state of perpetual compromise where every major decision had to be considered according to its effect across all five stages.”

Spore was more remembered for the controversial DRM it introduced that landed publisher EA in plenty of hot water, and till this day, it’s not quite the classic it could’ve been. What are your thoughts on the game? Do you have fond memories of Spore? Let us know in the comments below.

According to the panel, EA Maxis will reveal a “a brand new, Sci-Fi Action-RPG based on the DNA of Spore.”

There are a few options to what this could possibly be, one of which is Darkspore, this title was trademarked back in May, while the second option is a Spore title for consoles and PC, that was announced during EA’s financial call to investors in February.

Comic Con will be unleashed during July 22-25 at San Diego.

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