Today is a sad day for those who hold old-school EA games like Mirror’s Edge or Onrush close to their hearts. Electronic Arts (EA) confirmed this morning that they are shutting down online services for several of their older titles over the coming months, including, but not limited to, Mirror’s Edge.
While breaking the news (and many hearts), EA explained the impracticalities of keeping these services live and mentioned the behind-the-scenes work and resources needed to sustain these online services. In short, they said it’s just no longer viable.
“The decisions to withdraw particular features or modes of certain EA games or to retire online services relating to older EA games are never easy. The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into our games, their features and modes almost as much as the players, and it is hard to see one retired.
As games are replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the games that have been live for some time dwindles to a level – typically fewer than 1 per cent of all peak online players across all EA titles – where it’s no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping the online services for these games up and running.
We are also committed to constantly updating and improving the features and modes to keep in our games to ensure they remain exciting to play for as long as possible. That commitment to great gameplay sometimes means that we need to remove outdated features and modes.”
The titles losing their online capabilities over the next few months are Army of Two: The 40th Day and Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel; Mercenaries 2; Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Online services will also be suspended for Onrush; Mirror’s Edge; NBA Jam On Fire Edition; Gatling Gears, and Shank 2.