In light of SimCity's disastrous launch week, publisher Electronic Arts has suspended the marketing campaign for the game, according to an internal email obtained by Polygon.

The email, which was sent to all of EA's marketing affiliate partners, informs them that EA is deactivating links through LinkShare and that "we ask you to please remove any copy promoting SimCity from your website for the time-being."

From Polygon:

"To be clear we are continuing to payout commissions on all SimCity sales that are referred, however we are requesting that you please stop actively promoting the game," the email reads. "We will notify you as soon as the SimCity marketing campaigns have been resumed and our promotional links are once again live in the Linkshare interface. We apologize for any inconveniences that this may cause, and we thank you for your cooperation."

Yesterday, Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw assured Kotaku that they are adding servers in an effort to get the game running stably. "Our priority now," Bradshaw said, "is to quickly and dramatically increase the number and stability of our servers and, with that, the number of players who can simultaneously access the game."

We've reached out to EA for comment, and will update when we hear back.

I always felt as though my Journey character would've been pretty good at the violin. And what do you know, that seems to be the case, as demonstrated by violinist Taylor Davis in this new video tribute.

I liked this video, partly because it's more reserved than the more histrionic exploits of Lindsey Stirling, as much as I enjoy her antics. Though I have to say, I couldn't help but wonder what the actual recording of Davis playing sounds like, given that she's playing the violin with gloves. I bet those are some funny-sounding outtakes.

I've been waiting to see more of the world of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. The downloadable game looks so different than most of the games that Starbreeze has put out and seems to be an eye-catching mix of exploration and co-operative puzzle-solving. The twist, though, is that you'll need to co-operate with yourself. Specifically, each thumbstick on a gamepad will control one of the game's siblings.

I really like how characters will react differently to each Brother. It's not the most novel mechanic in the world but it does resonate with how kids from the same family can rub adults different ways based on their personalities. Brothers will cost 1200 MS points on Xbox Live when it comes out this spring; pricing for Steam and PSN is still pending.

The fear of the unknown is powerful. Darkwood takes that idea to heart: it's a top-down procedurally generated survival horror game. This means that every time you play, you'll experience something different.

Adding to the tension is the fact that the game features roguelike elements and permadeath. You'll also be able to craft items, build barricades, and naturally, explore.

The footage above is of Darkwood in a pre-alpha stage, but even this early on, you can see both the eerie atmosphere and some of the mechanics in-play. Looks like a game to keep an eye on.

The city in the above image was created in the beta for the new SimCity and demonstrated that, as always, if gamers can draw some male genitalia into a game, they will. Really, they will.

Previous SimCity games only let players draw straight rodes into their cities. The new game lets you draw curved roads, meaning this kind of city couldn't even be erected in the older games.

The image above (sans Kotaku censor fish) was posted to the r/gaming section on Reddit yesterday by a user named EunByuL, but I can't tell if he or she is the creator. If anyone knows, say the word and I'll give proper credit.

Given that strangers can build cities that connect to yours in this new SimCity, I imagine that a penis-town like this could suddenly become a sister-city to whatever fine metropolis you're making. Will SimCity moderators flag it or ban it? I guess we'll see (or will we?). The game is rated E10+, though there's a massive loophole: "Includes online features that may expose players to unrated user-generated content (Windows PC)." Given that the game is always-online, make of that rating what you will.

So what drives people to do this kind of thing in the first place? Believe it or not, I'm looking into that. More of that later.

For now...

Here's another one, also from the beta:

Holy crap. Kotaku reader Will Turnbow and his wife made this cake for their daughter's tenth birthday, and I think it's no exaggeration to say this is the coolest thing you'll see today.

Based on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, the cake includes Skyloft, the Sealed Grounds, the Faron Woods, and a ton of characters and other intricate details from the game.

"The Temple entrance is 6 batches of Rice Krispies and the backside of the temple is 9 cakes stacked as high as we could make it," Turnbow writes on his YouTube video's description. "The small tower on either side are styrofoam wrapped with fondant. My wife made and painted all of the characters out of clay except for Link (I was able to use my Figma Link)."

Insanity. Nice work, Mr. and Mrs. Turnbow.

It's been a huge week for mobile running games. There's a new Temple Run that's tied to Disney's Oz: The Great and Powerful. Mini Ninjas went for a jog, Sonic the Hedgehog busted out time-tested moves, and the Monday Night Combat folks launched the Outland Games. All of these running games based on popular properties, and I'm saving crude polygonal kittens from pixel fires.

There's just something incredibly charming about Jones on Fire, finally released this week on iOS (Android coming soon) from Glass Bottom Games. It might be all the kitties. It could be more than that.

Originally designed during a BlazeJam benefit for those affected by the 2012 Colorado wildfire season, Jones on Fire has evolved into a simple and elegant little running/kitty-saving game with a striking retro look.

You play as Emma Jones, firefighter and cat lover, as she makes a series of mad dashes from the safety of her firehouse to a raging inferno in order to save as many cats as she can before they are completely engulfed by flames and eaten by the homeless (the homeless are not in this game). She runs, jumps and slides through the fire and the flames, an army of cats slowly amassing behind her, worshiping her as a god (probably). If she makes it back to the firehouse she can move onto the next level. The goal, as in life, is to rescue as many cats as she can before she dies.

Okay, she never dies. Should she lose her last life the kitties drag her back to the firehouse to start it all over again.

There isn't much to the game, which suits me just fine. There aren't any power-ups to pick up — just cats. There are some upgrades and items you can purchase from the in-game store, but nothing too complex or complicated.

Jones on Fire is just a simple little bit of fun developed by a person who probably thought I'd go through this entire app review without mentioning her name is Megan Fox (no relation.) It's quick, cute, and it sounds wonderful, thanks to a chippy-tuney soundtrack from Michael Nielsen and Nathan Madsen (now available on Bandcamp). As an added plus, it confuses the hell out of my cats. I'd pay nothing for that sort of entertainment a dozen times over.

Jones on Fire

• Genre: Runner
• Developer: Glass Bottom Games
• Platform: iOS, Android (coming soon)
• Price: Free

Get Jones on Fire on iTunes

The man known as Lord British has been gone from video games a long time. Yeah, he's had the whole space travel thing going on. And there was a messy bit of business where he got half a million dollars stolen from him to buy fancy magician paraphernalia. But it seemed really weird that Richard Garriott—an iconic creator responsible for the super-successful Ultima series—was staying away from video games for so long.

He never stopped thinking about making games, though. Garriott has been working on something and now he's ready to show it to the world.

Garriott came to Kotaku's Manhattan offices to offer us a first look at Shroud of the Avatar, the new role-playing experience that he's been quietly building with a small team in Austin. He wants the game to free players from always having to be an intrepid hero character and promises that you'll be able to have a rich varied experience as a normal townsperson who isn't hungry for combat. Like many an old-school developer nowadays, Garriott plans to get funding for Shroud of the Avatar via Kickstarter. The project page just went live and you can find it here.

And here's a livestream of Garriott talking about Shroud of the Avatar at South by Southwest.

During his time at Kotaku NYC, Garriott also talked about his own personal history as a game designer, talks about why he prefers making games for PCs and why it's better that Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts is back at making games instead of movies. He also explains the difference between a role-playing game and an RPG and shares his theory on the kinds of cyclical changes that hit with every hardware cycle—and why he's sick of that merry-go-round.

The interview above is a sprawling but fascinating 25 minutes. If you just want a look at gameplay from an early build of Shroud of the Avatar, then click on the second video for a run-through of the work-in-progress game. Without Garriott's essential early work, subsequent successes like Planescape: Torment and Wasteland probably wouldn't have been possible. The spiritual follow-ups to those titles have been big crowdfunding successes. It'll be interesting to see if Lord British's next big gamble will find the same kind of success.

A team of developers is looking to make a single-player city-building game that seems like the anti-SimCity—and they're asking for $250,000 on Kickstarter to make it happen.

Called Civitas, the project promises to be a SimCity clone that you can actually play offline, which might come as welcome news to fans burned by the recent launch disaster.

As the folks behind Civitas write:

Out of all of the possible types of games our fledgling studio could pick as our first project, why did we pick a city simulation title as our first effort?

Easy, it was out of a combination of how much we loved some of the original city simulation games back in the early PC days and our displeasure with the direction the new SimCity has taken under the iron fist of EA. We don't agree with the removal of single player, the lack of terraforming, lack of modding, and above all them forcing the worst form of draconian DRM on its players known as the "Always On-line" requirement. They are seriously not going to let you play their game if you aren't online. Anyone that has ever been forced to play under that DRM knows how terrible it is. Not only can your internet access stop you from playing, if EA is having any server issues (Yeah those never happen right?) you'll get a nice fat error message instead of your game starting. Forget playing while traveling or anything. This is not a good recipe for a simulation game. EA should really just rename it SimFarmVille and get it over with.

Ouch! Go check out the Kickstarter if you're interested in hearing more about the potential game and its plans.

Civitas - Plan, develop, and manage the city of your dreams! [Kickstarter — thanks, Dazza!]

There have been five God of War games and, in each one, Kratos slaughters his way through significant portions of the Greco-Roman pantheon. Wow, you might say, is there anybody left for the Ghost of Sparta to be mad at? Yeah, there is.

In a post on the PlayStation Blog, God of Ascension lead combat designer Jason McDonald and lead game designer Mark Simon say that the Sony Santa Monica team has plenty of material to work with:

Every game is a challenge, but the Greek mythos is so wide and varied. We could never do every myth that it has for us. We don't find it limiting; it's more exciting to explore more areas of it – new gods, new titans, new locales.

Take the Furies. They're primordial. They're from before the gods – they're more powerful than the gods. Some of their abilities are just ridiculous – so powerful. They make really great nemeses for Kratos.

Of course, anybody familiar with Greek mythology at all knows that there are hundreds of Olympians, demigods and spirits in various tales and stories. However, what you don't want with a series like this—one with no end in sight—is to have a main character going out and bullying dryads and water nymphs because he's angry all the time. Ascension is a prequel, sure, but eventually a sequel with Kratos will need to figure out if there's energy left in the same ol' mythology.