Over the past few weeks, Electronic Arts has shut servers down for fourteen games spanning multiple devices.
EA also included in its forum post: "The decisions to retire older EA games are never easy. The 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. But as games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles to a level — fewer than 1% 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 these games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99% of customers playing our more popular games. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage."
The first batch of servers to go offline went down March 31, which were:
-BATTLEFIELD™ 3: Aftershock for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch
-Fantasi Safari for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch
-Ghost Harvest for iPhone
And the second, more hefty batch of servers went offline on April 13, which were:
-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
Some of these shutdowns also included required online codes for access. The affected people may be around "1%," but it still is a paid product. Still, a business like EA has to balance service with functionality, I suppose.