Update: EA is now promising a free game to everyone who has activated their game by March 18th. At least that’s how I’m reading it. Details here. It’s not as good as a refund but it’s at least an acknowledgement that they screwed up and owe their customers something.

According to a post on CNET Amazon is making an exception to their normal “no refunds for digital content” policy in the case of SimCity.

Leave it to Amazon to show EA how it’s done, though. You’re in luck if you ordered a digital version of SimCity through Amazon and want to return the game. CNET spoke to an Amazon customer service representative who said the company currently allows refunds of the digital download of SimCity, which actually goes against company policy, but the massive influx of refund inquiries left Amazon with little choice. This move follows Amazon’s temporary closure of SimCity digital download sales yesterday, which lasted for nearly half a day — Amazon now sells the game again but warns users about server stability problems.

At the time of this writing, consumers posted over 1,500 reviews of SimCity on Amazon; over 1,350 of those reviews contained very critical comments and rated the game as one star, the lowest rating possible.

The Amazon rep indicated that the green light for refunds of the SimCity download could end at any point. “People are pretty upset [about SimCity],” said the rep, who has worked with Amazon for several years. “I haven’t seen anything like this before, even when people were upset with Diablo III.”

(Emphasis mine.)

If you purchased from Origin, your only recourse is to ride out the server storm and wait for things to settle. It can’t be much longer at this point.

Closing comments because this really is just an info share. I’m way sick and tired of arguing about this launch.