Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2009/09/09/monopoly_city_streets_down_on_debut/

Google Maps Monopoly board folds under server strain

Hardware funds misspent on Water Works?

By Austin Modine

Posted in Legal, 9th September 2009 18:43 GMT

There are riots in the Monopoly City Streets, after the game's debut today was utterly upended from the strain of the initial land grab.

The new online incarnation of Monopoly, which uses Google Maps as its game board, has fluctuated between completely inaccessible and intolerably slow throughout the day. The game's blog has apologized for the lack of hardware to meet demand:

"We ANTICIPATED an opening rush when we launched the Monopoly City Streets online game, but the first few hours have surpassed even our greatest EXPECTATIONS," a post made Wednesday morning states. "We are in the process of increasing our firepower and expect to be running more smoothly within the next several hours."

Meanwhile, the blog has hundreds of comments from irate players registering complaints that all the decent real estate has been snatched up by the lucky few who got through to the game's servers. The blog has added a poll asking whether the game should be reset once the new hardware is in place, although a Hasbro spokeswoman told El Reg they are currently not planning to reset the game.

Those familiar with the traditional Monopoly board game will recognize today's symptoms as analogous to the inevitable player clusterfuck at the start over who gets to play as the race car. ®