EA To Close Older Playfish FB Games

Electronic Arts has announced that it is to close a number of its Sims themed games on Facebook. As of June 14th The Sims Social, Pets Society and SimCity Social will go offline. SimCity Social won't even have been active a year when it is taken offline, having only launched on the 25th of June last year. After personally experiencing various connectivity issues with my own Sims Social game I can't say that these closures come completely out of the blue. EA have said that it took the "difficult decision" to close so many of its Facebook games after seeing a large decrease in game activity and player numbers.
All of the games in question were developed by EA-owned Playfish. The social game developer was bought by EA back in 2009 for $300 million. Facebook signed a "strategic" five year plan with EA shortly afterwards . And now, according to their website, all of Playfish's games are scheduled to close or have already been shut down with the exception of Madden Social 13. In the face of these social game shut downs EA has offered no statement on the fate of Playfish itself.
This news follows last week's layoffs of over 100 employees at EA Mobile Montreal. There are also reports of further closures to come at EA Mobile Brazil and of a studio in London where Playfish is presently based. Furthermore EA has decided to let go a number of staff at its customer service centre mere months after announcing the creation of 300 new positions in that area (http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/ea-galway-jobs-867104-Apr2013/). Are there even more closures, cut-backs and layoffs to come after all of this? One can only hope that this is the worst of it.