EA and Meta weren’t the only companies removing games this week

Over the course of this week, the developers of several major live service titles announced that their games would be shutting down. That means gamers who actively enjoyed those games, and possibly spent money on them, might have to move on.

The closures are a reminder of the challenges facing these ambitious online titles. If they don’t become massive hits quickly, they may be shut down before they really have time to find their footing. Any new entrant has to fight an uphill battle to compete against giants like fate 2, call Of Duty: War Zone, and Fortnite.

That means that, for many of these newer games, they’re stuck in a chicken-and-egg situation: they need players to become a hit, but players may not want to participate due to the myriad of other options available. . And some games just need time to really catch up; Fortnitefor example, it wasn’t even released as a battle royale.

Let’s review what was closed.

apex legends mobile will close on May 1 at 7 pm ET and will not refund players any real money they have spent in-game. The game was released on May 17, 2022, which means it didn’t even last a year.

Respawn Entertainment said that the game’s content pipeline “has started to fall short” of its “bar for quality, quantity, and cadence,” which is why it and development partner Lightspeed & Quantum Studios (a Tencent studio) have decided to close the game. below. You can still play the game before the May 1 shutdown.

EA is also finalizing development on a development Battlefield mobile game that had been in testing. “As the industry has evolved and our strategy to create a deeply connected Battlefield ecosystem has taken shape, we decided to change our current direction to better meet our vision for the franchise and meet the expectations of our players,” EA wrote in a blog post

However, it seems likely that we will see mobile versions of these franchises in the future. On Tuesday’s EA earnings call, CEO Andrew Wilson discussed the company’s vision for cross-platform experiences for both franchises going forward.

On June 6, the dodgeball battle royale game servers will be shut down. But in the coming months, developer Velan Studios will be releasing a free version of the game for Windows PC that allows players to host their own servers so they can keep playing if they want to.

“Creating such a different game with no benchmarks and running live services for the first time in many of our careers has also made the last two years particularly challenging,” Jeremy Russo, knockout of the city director, wrote in a blog post. “Despite over 12 million players and billions of KOs worldwide, there are several aspects of the game that need major disruption to better attract and retain enough players to be sustainable. Since we’re a small independent studio, it’s simply impossible for us to make those kinds of systemic changes to the live game while continuing to support it.”

knockout city released in May 2021 as a paid title published under the EA Originals brand. The game became free-to-play in June 2022, with developer Velan Studios taking over as publisher.

I’d like to take a second here to congratulate Velan for offering a way to continue playing after the servers are officially closed. I think it’s an option that other developers should strive to provide if they can.

rumbleverse it will close on February 28, which means it will have just over six months to live. Players will be eligible for a refund on anything they purchased, developer Iron Galaxy and publisher Epic Games wrote in a blog post.

“It is our sincerest hope that this news does not mark the end of rumbleverse”Iron Galaxy wrote in a blog post. “You may not have seen the Rumble in its final form yet. If we can welcome the people back to the deck of the battle barge, we hope they are there, strapped down and ready to take their rightful place in the canyon.”

The servers for crossfireXan Xbox version of the popular first-person shooter Crossfire from Korean developer Smilegate, will shut down on May 18. Access to the game’s single player campaigns will also be removed on that date.

There will be no additional content for the game, but players who made purchases within 14 days of February 3 can request a refund. Sales of the game are stopping on the Xbox Store.

“While our team worked hard to release numerous content updates, including fixes, new maps, modes, and in-game events, the game ultimately wasn’t where it needed to be,” the developers wrote in a shutdown FAQ. “As a result, we have made the difficult decision to shut down the game.”

you can continue playing virtual reality echo, one of Meta’s flagship VR games, until August 1 at 1 p.m.

“This decision was by no means made lightly,” developer Ready at Dawn said in a blog post. “But it was done for a lot of good reasons, chief among them being that the studio came together to focus on our next project. We can’t say anything about it yet, but we’re all excited and we need all hands on deck.”

I’ve never played Eco RVbut my colleague Sean Hollister is a fan, and you should read his article about the announcement.

Microsoft will pull some of its beloved games from the Xbox 360 Marketplace on February 7th. Square Enix is closing a dragon quest mobile game. Turtle Rock Studios says it has finished creating new content for Return 4 Bloodalthough the game will continue to be operational.

And there were some surprising delays this week, too. The Last of Us Part I on PC has been delayed from early to late March, while Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has been postponed from March to April 28.

at least we have hifi feverthat governs