EA Plans to Pull the Plug on More Aging Online Titles

[Shawn Zipay]

Another round of mercy killings are about to come about to aging online titles under the EA library. All of these shut downs will take place on August 11 of this year, except where noted.

• 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

[Stev0esque]

Re: EA Plans to Pull the Plug on More Aging Online Titles

Wait, has the BF2 demo been pulled yet? I remember it having still a relatively big player base or something for a demo as old as it was at the time.

[K-16]

Hmm... I guess it's time to turn to Hamachi for any PC die-hards out there (unless there is no LAN for an option). Don't know about console players though. The only one I'm aware of is Warp Pipe for GameCube, but that's not helpful in this case.

[Anarchy1]

Smart...shut down the popular online sports games so people have to buy the next one.

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: EA Plans to Pull the Plug on More Aging Online Titles

Smart...shut down the popular online sports games so people have to buy the next one.

They're shutting down the sports games that are over two years old at this point. The '11 games are still online. They only shut down servers for games that have players below a certain threshold and are no longer "popular" by any means.

[Lordsethonan]

Well it's costing the company money; it's not like on PC where you can keep running a server on your own money or set up hamachi or something else.

[K-16]

Well... PC gamers aren't entirely immune to this either. Tunnelling software (such as Hamachi) requires the game to have a LAN option. Running your own server only works if the game has dedicated server files available to the general public for free (Battlefield: Bad Company 2's server files are only available to selected third-parties as one example). That said, EA is only pissing off the die-hard minority group (who believe $60 should last several years of entertainment), which isn't exactly what I would call a bad decision. It does make me wonder how long the current games will last though (especially sports and racing games). 2-3 years? Depending on how long it's been out (and how many people stayed vs. migrated to other games), I may end up reconsidering my plan to purchase some titles I wanted before. My budget makes me post-date purchases (to a stupidly distant future) that would be day one for others, but that might not work out for me after all. That's what I deserve for being selfish and frugal.