Five Need for Speed Titles Are Being De-Listed Today, Servers Shutdown in August
After an already terrible year for Need for Speed, EA have announced that starting today, several older Need for Speed titles will be de-listed from digital stores and closing their in-game stores, with their online servers planned for shutdown later this year.
Announced on Reddit by Need for Speed community manager Max, starting today the following titles will be de-listed from digital stores:
Need for Speed Carbon
Need for Speed Undercover
Need for Speed Shift
Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed
Need for Speed The Run
Max explains that the de-listing of these five titles is to prepare their online services for retirement, which will occur on August 31st 2021. Until that date you can still play these titles online with friends, however from September 1st 2021, you will only be able to access these titles’ offline features.
The decision to de-list and shut down the online services for these games is due to the company supposedly “shifting gears to focus on the future of Need for Speed”, with these titles no longer feasible to keep up maintenance costs due to their old age and low player counts.
While racing games are no stranger to being delisted - with several Forza titles continuously being delisted each year, primarily due to expired music and vehicle manufacturer licenses - its interesting to see Need for Speed Carbon was still being sold and maintained 15 years after release, and why all of a sudden EA has decided to retire them all if music and licensing wasn’t the issue.
What becomes extremely problematic is the fate of Need for Speed (2015) in several years time, with the modern cult-classic reboot built specifically to be an always-online title with no offline functionality whatsoever. Whether or not EA will mitigate this issue when the time comes remains to be seen.
With more and more companies beginning to de-list and retire their PS3/360 titles, this move paints a broad image of what’s to come what with the push for digital, service-based titles and with the lack of proper game preservation, EA are essentially killing a part of Need for Speed history.
Well, with that out the way, lets hope for more optimistic Need for Speed news in 2022 then, shall we?
[Source: Need for Speed Reddit]