It has just been revealed that EA will be shutting down servers that are associated with numerous older games. Not surprisingly, most of them are for sports titles.
The publisher explains:
The decisions to retire older EA games are never easy. The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired. But as games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles to a level — fewer than 1% of all peak online players across all EA titles — where it’s no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99% of customers playing our more popular games. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage.
The following lists of all titles that will be effected. One goes dead today, with the bulk happening in the coming weeks:
December 31, 2012
World Series Superstars for Facebook
January 3, 2013
FIFA Manager 11 for PC
January 11, 2013
FIFA Soccer 11 for PC, PS3, Wii & Xbox 360
FIFA Soccer 11 Ultimate Team for PS3 & Xbox 360
Madden NFL 11 for PS3, Wii & Xbox 360
Madden NFL 11 Ultimate Team for PS3 & Xbox 360
NBA JAM for PS3 & Xbox 360
NBA LIVE 10 for PS3 & Xbox 360
NCAA Football 11 for PS3 & Xbox 360
NHL 11 for PS3 & Xbox 360
NHL 11 Ultimate Team for PS3 & Xbox 360
January 14, 2013
The Sims 2 for PC/MAC and TheSims2.com
January 19, 2013
Trenches II for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch
It's worth noting that everything will remain operational (with the lone Facebook game being the only possible exception). Only multiplayer and roster updates will no longer be available.
