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Further EA Server Shutdowns Announced
Alice O'Connor
40
A dozen EA games are scheduled to lose online multiplayer support over March and April when their servers are shut down, the video games colossus has revealed, including The Godfather on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and Mercenaries 2 on PC.

EA states that the games on the hitlist "represent less than 0.3% of all peak online players across all EA titles"--no doubt seeking to avoid a repeat of the upset following the last round of shutdowns, which hit Madden NFL 09 and Facebreaker among others.

Despite some people's perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99.7% of customers playing our more popular games. These decisions to retire games is never easy. The EA 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.

The list, below, also reveals the final three EA Xbox survivors--Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Burnout 3: Takedown and Madden NFL 09--who've dodged shutdowns so far but will finally go dark when Microsoft ends Xbox Live for the original Xbox on April 15.

March 16, 2010 Online Service Shutdown
  • Def Jam for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  • Godfather for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  • Lord of the Rings: Conquest for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  • Mercenaries 2: World in Flames for PC
  • Need for Speed: Carbon for PlayStation Portable
  • Need for Speed: ProStreet for PlayStation Portable
  • Simpsons for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
April 15, 2010 Online Service Shutdown
  • Burnout 3: Takedown for PlayStation 2
  • Army of Two for PlayStation 3 (Asia only)
Additionally, the shutdown of Xbox LIVE for Original Xbox consoles and games (scheduled for April 15, 2010) will retire online services for the following titles:
  • Battlefield 2: Modern Combat for Xbox
  • Burnout 3: Takedown for Xbox
  • Madden NFL 09 for Xbox
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  • Johnnsen legacy 10 years
    reply
    February 17, 2010 6:23 AM

    "Mercenaries 2: World in Flames for PC"

    That was a quick one, considering Burnout 3 held up so well.

    • Schnapple legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      February 17, 2010 7:16 AM

      Well since they canned Pandemic I guess it was only a matter of time.

    • TANSTAAFL420 legacy 10 years
      reply
      February 18, 2010 3:07 AM

      I just got a copy for myself and a friend from d2d a couple months ago so we could play co-op, we were still playing.. kind of a let down, though no surprise coming from EA.

      I just wonder, with all these old games still selling well online how they hope to cache in.
      I would never buy mercs 2 without the multiplayer, its built from the ground up as a co-op game.

      would you buy quake without multiplayer? I know a lot of people who got it from steam not long ago and I know damn well they wouldn't have bothered if it didn't work online anymore.

      I understand it costs money to run servers, but they choose to do it, they could just let us host.

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