Electronic Arts is planning more online game server closures, saying that it wants to focus its efforts on maintaining games that people are actually interested in playing.
It seems like EA has been bringing the hammer down on a lot of games lately, and not just old ones, either: As February’s list of closing servers revealed, age is only one factor that goes into these decisions. EA touched on that point in its announcement of two new rounds of closures, saying that the games being shut down represent less than .3 percent of all peak online players, over all EA games.
“Despite some people’s perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99.7 percent of customers playing our more popular games,” the company said. “These decisions to retire games is never easy. The EA development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired.”
Still, as Travis Coates learned, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. And this is what EA is going to do:
Online Service Shutdowns Scheduled for March 16:
- Def Jam for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- Godfather for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- Lord of the Rings: Conquest for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- Mercenaries 2: World in Flames for PC
- Need for Speed: Carbon for PlayStation Portable
- Need for Speed: ProStreet for PlayStation Portable
- Simpsons for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Online Service Shutdowns Scheduled for April 15:
- Burnout 3: Takedown for PlayStation 2
- Army of Two for PlayStation 3 (Asia only)
EA also confirmed that Microsoft’s planned termination of Xbox Live support for original Xbox consoles and games on April 15 will result in the end of online support for the Xbox versions of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Burnout 3: Takedown and Madden NFL 09.
