Maxis stated that the development team would be moving on to other projects. This day of announcement was referred to as the 'EA-Land Sunset'. In April 2008, four weeks after EA-Land was launched, it was announced that the development team had disassembled, and that the game would shut down on August 1 the same year. Test Center 3 was created freely accessible in hopes of expanding the game's userbase, and in-game ATMs were added, which could accept real money for Simoleons, in hopes of generating revenue. TSO-E developers combined the game's cities into two similar cities, re-branded the game as EA-Land, and erased player data. Furniture could be created and uploaded in the form of single-tiled chairs, sculptures, and decorations and multi-tiled tables.
Custom objects were enabled within TSO in late 2007, allowing players to upload. The TSO-E developers were interested in user-submitted ideas on how they could maintain a stable economy to negate the gains players made illegitimately through exploits.
In March 2007, Electronic Arts employee Luc Barthelet, who served as General Manager of Maxis during the development of The Sims, assembled a team to push significant updates to the game under a project titled 'TSO-E'.Ī major update to the game was user custom content.
