Electronic Arts are pulling the plug on the online servers for multiple of their old games. Initially reported by TrueAchievements, EA has added new games to its list of shutdown online services.
Some of the games to be affected are 2009’s Mirrors Edge, NBA Jam On Fire Edition, Gatling Gears, and Shank 2, which will all have their online services terminated on January 19, 2023.
Army of Two: The 40th Day and Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel will cease on October 20 and on November the 9th online service for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (PS3 and Xbox 360), and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, including Kane’s Wrath expansion (Xbox 360) will also be shut down.
The publisher noted that the decision to withdraw certain features or modes of EA games or to retire online services of older games is never an easy decision to make.
“The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into our games, their features, and modes almost as much as the players, and it is hard to see one retire.”
EA continued, saying that as games get replaced with newer titles the player count drops significantly – typically fewer than 1% of all peak online players across all EA titles. At this point, it simply becomes no longer feasible to continue doing the groundwork behind running the games. The publisher ended off by saying that in the pursuit of keeping gameplay fresh and exciting for as long as possible, sometimes it makes sense to remove outdated features and modes.
It’s sad to see support end for Command and Conquer and Army of Two. Mainly because I never got to play Army of Two and it was something always high up on my to-play list (boohoo poor me.) For Command and Conquer I’m not surprised as the PC support has ended for Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath back in 2014.
While EA shut’s down support for its older games, new features keep getting added to its newer games. Respawn Entertainment and EA have recently announced a new season for Apex Legends, dubbed Eclipse the season starts on November the 1st and will introduce a new cross-platform gifting feature, a new map, and an exciting new defense-based hero called Catalyst.