FromSoftware has revealed that it’s the end of an era for Dark Souls 2 on seventh-generation consoles.
In a tweet from the official Dark Souls account, they shared this message:
“The Dark Souls 2 PS3 and Xbox 360 servers will shut down on March 31, 2024.
A message stating that online play is disabled will be displayed. Offline play will still be possible.
PC, PS4 & Xbox One servers will not be affected.
Thank you to those who have played since launch.”
This is another instance of the slow deprecation of old video games. While fans were able to convince Sony to keep the servers up for the online stores for the PlayStation Vita and the PlayStation 3 indefinitely, the same enthusiasm was not there to convince individual publishers to remove their games, or to pull services like online play, from their older titles.
Some fans may question why removing older games or features is necessary. In theory, keeping these up do not cost that much to the companies. The answer to this isn’t that much different than in other situations.
For most of these game developers, they did not give the rights to their games to the console company, whether that’s Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo. They have to deal with the costs of the upkeep themselves, and that can be bothersome, not so much to the company bottomline, but to the company that has to worry about keeping old games up while making new games.
There are also other mitigating situations. For example, we all know many Marvel licensed games were pulled from sale because the license ran out. Similarly, tons of older racing games, even games that aren’t a decade old, get removed from Steam and other storefronts because their licenses with the car manufacturers ended.
Some people will argue that there was something different in the online experience in Dark Souls 2 on those consoles, that isn’t recreated in the remastered version Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin. Even if that were true, it would ignore the reality that the online community that played the title on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 is no longer there.
This isn’t an argument against video game preservation, but if we were to be realistic, there are simply some aspects of video games that are stuck in a particular zeitgeist, and cannot be truly preserved. It feels strange that that is the case with online modes and online gaming, but that is demonstrably true.
If you were a player of the original, janky, imperfect, but somehow critically acclaimed Dark Souls 2, when it originally released, and have fond memories of playing online, cherish those memories today.
