It’s D’Ohver For 'The Simpsons: Tapped Out', Closing In 2025

EA is sunsetting the freemium game after nearly 13 years

Electronic Arts, the game company known by its abbreviation EA, is tapping out on their freemium mobile game The Simpsons: Tapped Out.

As part of its final content update “Tapped”, the company informed users in an in-game announcement that the game had ended in-app purchases and would be completely shuttered in January 2025, following an impending removal from the App Store in October. The in-game announcement addressed to TSTO Fans reads “Sadly, in-app purchases have been disabled, and the game will no longer be available from the App Store after October 31, 2024. You may continue playing until January 24, 2025. Then the game will no longer be accessible. We bid you adieu. Until we meet again…” With these changes, the premium currency, donuts, which could be used for premium characters and buildings, can now be bought with the basic currency of in-game dollars. In-game dialogue also acknowledged the impending end.

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A fuller statement released on social media like Facebook read “We have made the difficult decision to sunset Tapped Out. In-app purchases have been disabled, and the game will be removed from the app stores October 31, 2024. You may continue playing until January 24th, 2025, at which point servers will be turned off and TSTO will not be accessible.” It continued, “The decision to end our twelve-year journey is an emotional one. Together with our partners at The Simpsons and The Walt Disney Company, we have delighted in bringing this game to you, the fans, and seeing how you’ve each built your own beloved versions of Springfield. It has been a remarkable journey, and we are grateful that we’ve been able to deliver 308 updates, 831 characters and including today’s final farewell 1,463 questlines. As our journey comes to a close, we offer our sincerest thanks to you, the players, who have made this all possible.”

Tapped Out debuted in Apple’s App Store in 2012 and Google’s Play Store in 2013. Players could their own Springfield using familiar characters and locations from the show. The regular updates included annual holiday quest lines and tie-ins for most episodes in-season. I was a regular player from summer 2013 until November 2017. Of the characters that talked, hearing the same soundbytes familiarized me with them very quickly, that when I would watch the episodes on FXX it’d basically perk up my ears and result in the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing to the screen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood meme. The end came when my data usage was turned off while I was at JobCorps, and then my phone was confiscated. Maybe I could’ve used my tablet but by the time I completed the program by the middle of the coming summer I had already missed months of events and never went back. To its credit, there were plenty of deep cut characters and character skins even at that stage of the game’s life.

However, as the game winds down, everything is coming back in weekly waves to help lapsed or otherwise yet-to-complete players actually have a chance to complete the game. On October 1, the 2016 and 2017 pre-Time Traveling Toaster content arrives, followed by 2017 Time Traveling Toaster and 2018 content on the 8th, then 2019 to 2021 content on the 15th, and then the final three years of content on the 22nd. The news comes mere days before the show proper begins its 36th season on Fox with the episode “Bart’s Birthday” on Sunday, September 29. Tapped Out had also been the series’s sole video game since the movie’s multiconsole game in 2007, with Hit & Run preceding in 2003. While the game may be going away, it has a very well-kept and updated wiki with a full character and event repository to check out if you missed out. Futurama’s take on the same genre of mobile game, Worlds of Tomorrow, closed in April 2023. Whether Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is still being supported is unclear as of writing.

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Sources: Deadline, Out of Context Simpsons Couch Gags, Tapped Out Wiki