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List of Online Services EA Has Shut Down
- ctide 14y agoShould also include Rupture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupture_(social_networking) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupture_(social_networking) :( Oh, and I Play Wow too: http://wow.joystiq.com/2009/01/16/i-play-wow-facebook-app-reaches-100-000-users/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2009/01/16/i-play-wow-facebook-app-re...
- sturadnidge 14y agoThe above is a cache link because ea.com is returning 500's, I assume as part of the Sim City debacle. The actual URL is here: http://www.ea.com/1/service-updates http://www.ea.com/1/service-updates
- mindstab 14y agoSo there's a weird gap. I can still pay games I bought in the 90s... but apparently EA games I bought >5 years ago I can no longer play...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- pyrocat 14y agoExactly the point. What if these games had the same DRM that Sim City has?
- mindstab 14y agoNooo. some of these games (simcity 2?) aren't even online. It looks like they shutdown the always online DRM server. you can't even play single player on it anymore. EDIT: sims 2 (auto typed city given the article as context) whoops
- mintplant 14y agoI'm trying to figure out what you mean by this. There is no SimCity title on this list, nor has there ever been a "SimCity 2" to begin with. Unless you're talking about the just-released series reboot? Or maybe "The Sims 2" - which has no always-on DRM system to speak of? In any case, if a game has always-on DRM, the publisher could always release a patch disabling it before shutting down the servers.
- natem345 14y agoHe probably meant SimCity 2000, which can still be played despite being nearly 20 years old... it would surely be on that list if it was more recent. Has EA ever done so or indicated they will release such a no-DRM patch? I have a feeling they'll just say "too bad." I'd bet many of those games had significant single-player modes that are now inaccessible. Valve at least has announced they have a patch ready if Steam should ever go offline.
- pyrocat 14y agoThe patch would cost a lot more development dollars. In order to make always-on DRM effective there needs to be some significant logic kept on the company servers. If it was a simple on/off switch it would be very easy to break. Thus, creating a patch to move that logic from the company servers to the players computer is going to cost a lot of money at a time when the company is shutting down the servers because they're trying to save money. Not going to happen.
- whatupdave 14y agoYep. And most likely you wont be able to play SimCity 5 in 5 years time.
- mmanfrin 14y agoMadden 11? Meaning, a game that came out 2 years ago is no longer playable?
- joshschreuder 14y agoIn terms of online multiplayer, yeah.
- flyt 14y agoMost people that play Madden games move yearly to the new releases. The servers that support the old games probably drain fast and are unneeded after some predictable period of time. Whether or not server shutdown behavior encourages this yearly migration is another issue.
- prawn 14y agoMost people, not all people. Pretty tough on those who forked out and wanted to keep playing online.
- flyt 14y agoI'm not disagreeing with you, but at the end of the day EA has the exact numbers of how many players move from one game to the next, and are making business decisions with that in mind.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoThey don't really give you a choice, do they? Wouldn't it be in their interest to drop support after two years, even if 25% of people were still playing to push them to buy a new copy?
- prawn 14y agoNot disagreeing with you either, in fact my first instinct was to downvote your previous post but I realised it was EA's behaviour I disapproved of rather than you discussing it. My issue is that someone spending their hard-earned on a game doesn't get a major warning on the box that their online play will drop away within a couple of years. It's small print, below the small print, that says "EA MAY RETIRE ONLINE FEATURES AFTER 30 DAYS NOTICE POSTED ON WWW.EA.COM." I think game buyers are right to be very nervous when so much of a new gaming experience is reliant on a company that shuts down a product when there's not enough money left to be made or their priorities lie elsewhere. Not everyone can justify annual upgrades of their sports games or their consoles, etc. Or perhaps they just don't like new features or styles - e.g., I like FIFA 2002 more than recent iterations.
- fletchowns 14y agoIf they are going to shut down a server for a game, why not release that 1 final patch that will either let people run their own server, or make it so it's no longer dependent on a server?
- Lockyy 14y agoIf that happened why would you buy the new games that the servers were shut down to make way for?
- ekianjo 14y agoNaive answer: because they make better, newer games ?
- phaus 14y agoThis is EA we are talking about. Each new release is just as likely to completely fuck up the core gameplay mechanics as it is to marginally improve them. Actually, now that Bobby Kotick has completely destroyed everything that Blizzard stood for, you can say it about pretty much every large game development company other than Valve Software.
- rcfox 14y agoIf the only reason people are playing the new game is because the old one shut down, then you're not really releasing a new game; you're renewing their subscription. You should either realize that this is evil and innovate, or realize that this is inefficient and bake it in.
- malloreon 14y agoFor the roster updates and game "improvements."
- InclinedPlane 14y agoIndeed. But look at from EA's perspective. They already have your money, why do they care?
- tedchs 14y agoI thought the point of "the cloud" is companies can relatively easily serve "the long tail" of consumers?
- flyt 14y agoNot for game servers. We're talking about full applications that have to run somewhere, written years ago, by people that may not be at the company. Each additional game they have to support as a 24/7/365 service incurs some support costs that don't necessarily decrease over time, or with the active number of players.
- nwh 14y agoIdeally once the game is shut down, the server becomes free or open source for users.
- betterunix 14y ago...and then a fun game becomes a deterrent to buying the newest games. Of course, if the game is still fun, why not just keep the servers running and keep making money in subscription fees? What is the point of demanding that people pay for a new game when you can just charge them for old games?
- tacticus 14y agomost of those games are not sub games. they are just matchmaking and DRM.
- flyt 14y agoWhat if the code in the game server contains non-GPL/free libraries? What if it includes bindings to proprietary services and sensitive data? How much time should EA devote to repackaging game server code for open source release, knowing that it will barely get any use and could only result in less sales in the future?
- larrydavid 14y agoNote that most (if not all, as I only scanned the list) of these games do not depend on an online connection to play the game like Sim City V. They have an offline single-player component and it is the multiplayer functionality that has been shut down. There are also a good amount of mobile/Facebook apps in the list. If you are being critical of EA then the worst examples are games that were only released 2-3 years ago, such as many of the sports games like FIFA and Madden. Although these have had at least a couple of new iterations since then because of the yearly release schedule for their sports franchises. The majority of the player base tends to move over to the new version very promptly, much like the COD series. On the whole this list looks far worse than it actually is. I don't think it is entirely unreasonable to shut down the multiplayer component of games that were released 8 years ago.
- arkitaip 14y ago8 years ago? People can still play games such as Diablo II and Starcraft and those were released between some 15 years ago.
- larrydavid 14y agoWell, the online multiplayer element anyway. I am not a PC gamer as such and so I have never played the games you mention, but even I know that there are no games in the list that are even moderately comparable to Diablo II and Starcraft in terms of longevity. Those two games are iconic PC titles with a huge fanbase/following even today.
- hughlomas 14y agoWhile I have many complaints about Diablo III, I was never afraid of Blizzard shutting down the servers, and that definitely factored into my purchasing decision. As you note, they have been running the Diablo II and Starcraft servers for well over a decade.
- pyrocat 14y agoI think the larger point is that when EA decides it is no longer profitable to pay for Sim City servers, the game (singleplayer experience and all) will simply cease to exist. There will be no searching through old boxes to find that install CD and take a trip down memory lane. There will be no reinstalling from Steam to show your friend this cool game mechanic. The game will die a full and permanent death, the equivalent of which would be a self-destruct timer on your physical game disc. This list is a list of games that EA has already decided to kill the multiplayer capacity, but I think the point the OP was trying to make was "What if all of these games had the same DRM Sim City does today?", they wouldn't just be a lessened gaming experience because no multiplayer, they would be gone forever. We have the expectation with an MMO (where we pay a monthly fee to keep playing in an online persistent world) that it won't last forever, but Sim City has traditionally been a single player game. There are ostensibly reasons to have an online component for the new Sim City that is outside of the realm of DRM, but if you think about it, those reasons (players control other cities in your region) could easily be duplicated with simple AI or local multiplayer. Instead of going that route, EA decided that this game would live as long as it decided it was profitable and no longer.
- bicknergseng 14y agoI should point out that a lot of those on that list are original xbox games, which all would have been shut down on MS's end when they shut off the original Xbox Live. See http://kotaku.com/5535672/the-last-man-to-play-halo-2-on-xbox-live http://kotaku.com/5535672/the-last-man-to-play-halo-2-on-xbo....
- nthitz 14y agoI'm sure that list of sports titles will grow every year which is rather unsettling. Especially considering EA has an exclusive license with most of the sports leagues so other publishers can't even compete in the area.
- ryguytilidie 14y agoEvery single 11 series game being gone is inexcusable. I have friends who own TW11, Madden11, NHL11, FIFA 11 and everything is just dead now. I understand they have to take things offline at some point, but for the amount of money they made this is just shocking.
- mynameisvlad 14y agoNot really. Sports games have insanely high turnaround times. People go to the next version really quickly to get the newest rosters and engines. They look at player data and make a decision that it's no longer profitable to keep the servers up.
- kevinh 14y agoCan we not obsess about this like reddit is doing? This is entirely tangential to the purpose of this site. One article about this is more than enough.
- potch 14y agoI'm curious what you've decided the purpose of this site is. This seems like a huge issue to discuss around the future of software and the concept of "abandonware", as well as a cautionary tale about DRM, scaling, and failing to plan for success. All sounds about right to me for this site.
- banachtarski 14y agoWhen you say tangential, I assume you mean orthogonal?
- cheald 14y agoI think it's a fairly poignant example of what happens when SaaS fails, and what it means when you have a SaaS business offering.
- bryans 14y agoI'm genuinely curious as to why you think having two separate but related threads on a forum is of any consequence. It seems that every other minute someone here dramatizes these submissions, as if having a line of text in the feed that you're not personally interested in is somehow akin to the tragedies of rape and murder (hyperbole intended). I assure you, the people constantly complaining about every submission is far more annoying than the occasional (subjectively) extraneous submission.
- brokentone 14y agoThis is my big concern with the new SimCity. If I pay $60 for SimCity, I want it to stick around more than 2 years, heck last time I booted my 486 I got simcity 2000 playing again. A little more real-world, I still occasionally play the original Starcraft. The argument against these always on games is that they _could_ do such things, then add to it that EA _does_ such things...
- drivebyacct2 14y agoTried to play BF2: BC yesterday, sure enough Origin was getting pounded. I'm not a huge gamer so it's not a big deal for me to say so, but I won't buy an EA game again.
- tokenizer 14y agoI feel like it's more important that casual gamers are noticing and reacting to this. They don't listen to us xcore ones!
- lurkinggrue 14y agoThe only EA game I bought in the past decade was Worms for android. Never was able to run it ever. The entire experience was a pie in the face. I will never buy from them again.
- rcfox 14y agoThis might help you: http://blog.nofate.me/?p=35 http://blog.nofate.me/?p=35 I've never tried it myself though because I don't own any games on Origin.
- colinshark 14y agoI guess I'm tooting my own horn now, but one of the original design choices for my game was to allow player-hosted servers. I don't want my game to die when I stop supporting it. Matchmaking is centralized, but the game can be configured for third party matchmaking servers. If it was good enough for 90s games, it's good enough for today's games.
- simcop2387 14y agoI've always thought a nice matchmaker that was OS would be nice to have for all of that kind of thing. Also nice game, voted for it on steam for you.
- dendory 14y agoAnd this is what's wrong with always-on DRM. A sad state of gaming we are in now. In 20 years, we will look back at the games from the 80s and 90s, then see a wide empty gap from an era where almost all new games required vendor support and are therefore unplayable anymore.
- jjm 14y agoI originally wanted to buy new SimCity but thank good ness I didn't. It wasn't until now that I see how chock full of 'DRM' it has. Someone should kickstart(er) a SimCity 'like' game the way it was _meant_ to be.
- T-hawk 14y agoYup, that's already happening. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-develop-and-manage-the-city-of-your-d http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-...
- antidaily 14y agoNO! Not MVP 07 NCAA Baseball for PlayStation 2 and Xbox.
- jiggy2011 14y agoJust to clarify, I assume that for some of these games the actual multiplayer game hosting is not done by EA and follows a P2P model or allows the use of third party dedicated server (e.g counterstrike)? So it's just the match making servers that are shut down? If it's just matchmaking then perhaps a third party can support all matchmaking for abandoned games, Steam seems to do something like this with it's built in matchmaking. For example it's still (last I checked) possible to play the original Unreal Tournament online.