EA to shutter online support for more aging titles
Electronic Arts has announced plans to close down servers for a number of its older online titles, including Battlefield 2: Modern Combat on consoles, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and more.
Electronic Arts has announced plans to deactivate online features for a handful of its older titles, a plan the company seems to be quite fond of. Standard fodder for EA's wrath are 2009 and 2010 based sports games, select demos, the Quantum Leap inspired Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Need for Speed: Most Wanted (a personal favorite), and more.
Server closings will begin with a major power outage on August 11 of this year, with 2010 versions of Madden and NHL seeing online features closed for business on October 1.
EA's service site notes that as "the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles below a point" the publisher decides to pull resources away from older titles in favor of newer games.
One of the contributing factors to EA not originally supporting Xbox Live was said to be Microsoft's instance to manage online portals for games on its service. In 2004, EA and Microsoft made a deal that would allow EA to manage its own servers for game releases, as it had already been doing with releases on the PlayStation 2.
Since those early days, EA has often gone back into its library of dusty releases to pull the plug on online services for games. EA's current list of titles with dead online features now totals over 100.
- August 11, 2011 Online Service Shutdown
- Army of Two for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- Army of Two Demo for Xbox 360
- Battlefield 2142 Demo for PC
- Battlefield 2: Modern Combat for Xbox 360
- Battlefield 2: Modern Combat Demo for Xbox 360
- Medal of Honor Airborne for PlayStation Portable
- Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for PlayStation Portable and Wii
- NASCAR 09 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (North America)
- NCAA Basketball 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- NCAA Football 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- Need for Speed Most Wanted for PC and Xbox 360
- Need for Speed Undercover for PlayStation Portable;
- SKATE for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 10 for PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii
- Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 11 Demo for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- October 1, 2011 Online Service Shutdown
- Madden NFL 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- NHL 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
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replyXav de Matos posted a new article, EA to shutter online support for more aging titles.
Electronic Arts has announced plans to close down servers for a number of its older online titles, including Battlefield 2: Modern Combat on consoles, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and more.-
I'm a bit confused. Does this mean these games can't be played online whatsoever?
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http://www.gameranger.com/
to make it easier for everyone. they have a list of supported titles.-
Thanks for the mention! Yes, I added Need for Speed: Most Wanted to GameRanger back on April 7 in anticipation of further shutdowns, and it's now getting around 5,000 multiplayer games played each day.
(I'm the developer of GameRanger.) -
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It's a VPN multiplayer client.
My buddies and I used this to play Borderlands because no matter who hosted one of use would not connect. It was a pain in the ass until we found this.
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Paging Andrea Rene, Andrea Rene, please pick up a white courtesy telephone.
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What about Multiplayer Battletech:3025.....
........oh, wait, John Riccitiello shut it down on the eve of launch because his insecure little gonads couldn't handle being beholden to MS.
30,000 ppl with cash-in-hand ready to subscribe.
Well, to be fair, the game "Majestic" deserved that money instea.......oh, wait......... -
I still play the Battlefield 2142 demo.. :(
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You know, it's nice they actually announce this, most publishers just quietly kill the online for older titles. And frankly, they only shut down games that no one is playing online anymore. Everyone fondly remembers NFS: Most Wanted, but when was the last time you booted it up for a multiplayer race?
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Most developers (used to) release stand-alone servers so those of us interested in playing the games can run our own hardware.
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It's hard for me to get too upset about this. These games get shut down because their online communities are dead anyway. Online games have a shelf life, that's just how it works. It is unfortunate you can't coordinate it with people manually, but you can't really expect console games to support user-run servers.
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I had such a blast playing the 360 version of BF2, can't believe it's taken them this long to take the servers down though.
