As has become something of a yearly tradition for Electronic Arts, the publisher is shutting down the online servers for eleven of its games.
On April 13, EA will kill the online servers for FIFA 10, Bloom Blox, and MMA, among other titles in its library that it says are “no longer feasible” to keep running. Fewer than 1% of EA’s online players are using these games, the publisher said, making it tougher to justify keeping engineers and IT staff on those servers.
The full list, courtesy EA’s official update:
April 13, 2012 — Online Services Shutdown
BOOM BLOX Bash Party for Wii
Burnout™ Revenge for Xbox 360
EA Create for PC, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360
EA Sports Active 2.0 for PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360
EA Sports Active NFL Training Camp for Wii
FIFA 10 for PlayStation Portable and Wii
The Godfather™ II for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
MMA for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Need for Speed™ ProStreet for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
The Saboteur™ (loss of The Midnight Club access) for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Spare Parts for PlayStation 3 Xbox 360
Perhaps adding insult to injury is the fact that MMA, which is only eighteen months old, required Online Pass, a one-time use code for multiplayer and online content that you’d have to purchase separately if you bought the game used or borrowed it from a friend. If you did buy an Online Pass for MMA, it was a very short-term investment.
“*Sigh* Some very good times on this game.. met some true friends.. won some money and met some fight-game enemies,” one user wrote on EA’s forums. “I have to ask, why do the servers need to be shut down?”
We’ve reached out to EA Sports for comment and will update should they choose to respond.
Online Service Updates [Electronic Arts]
Now, I always forget, but in the case of PC titles with online activation, does doing this shut them down permanently?
Activation servers are different from multiplayer service servers.
Aw man, Spare Parts is being taken down after only a year?
I always wanted that game but I was always busy with other games, but I would have purchased it at a special price drop or Gold member weekly reduce.
Rage. My mate bought an Online Pass for EA MMA for his second hand copy just so we could fight each other online without having to travel to each other’s house – and now what a waste of money.
Depends, how long ago was this and how much game time have you had playing this game?
Honestly I don’t so much mind this. The size of EA’s datacentres would be no laughing matter if they kept a server alive for every game in their port folio forever.
I don’t think anyone is asking forever, that is just wishful thinking. However, a certain level of support should be expected and 18 months isn’t really a great deal of time.
eg: Burnout Revenge is being removed after 6 years, a game that had no DLC and/or online pass, obviously it was more popular than MMA, but Burnout was a game that had no possible revenue stream for EA since it’s release.
My issue is that the similar level of support should be given to games that might have online passes and/or DLC map packs, seeing as customers may have invested extra money into it.
Well they can’t complain about used game sales for these games anymore.
Bring back the days of dedicated servers on consoles! On the original Xbox I used to play Return to Castle Wolfenstein with a bunch of people. The game allowed a dedicated server. One of the guys had an Xbox setup purely as a dedicated server and we would all connect to it. It obviously requires some investment of a 2nd console and 2nd copy of the game, but when there’s a constant group of 10+ people playing, its only a small investment per person! Obviously this is where PC has an advantage, but even games like CoD on PC are hosted through Activision these days so it won’t be too long I guess until dedicated servers are a thing of the past 🙁
What I don’t understand is why these games require connection through EA servers? Surely the infrastructure of Xbox Live would allow people to connect to one another to play whatever game they wanted. If EA wants to host the game for say 2yrs for stats purposes and updates etc but once that time has expired, why not have something in place where people can then just connect to one another to play purely for enjoyment purposes, and not for win loss stats or future updates?
Yes. BRING BACK THE DEDICATED SERVER.
No more nudity for The Saboteur, WTF EA!
some people actually paid for that, thats not right!
The stupid thing about this one is that you download a file, and as you mention you can buy it… it’s not something that should actually require any form of dedicated EA server interaction.
I have it and I’m sure I can access this content offline.
You can… it just wont be available for purchase from now on.
Surely they could write off the cost of storing a 50MB (?) file with Sony & MS, in exchange for the occasion purchase of said content?
It’s almost occasional free money!
I wonder why they left Battlefield 3 off the list – they took those servers down a month or two back.
+1
could anyone explain why i’ve only every heard about ea shutting down multiplayer servers and (bar chromehounds) never for any other x360 games? is it just because these game don’t support peer to peer multiplayer through xbl like almost every other game?