In surprise news, EA is delisting four of its oldest Need For Speed games currently available on digital stores, today.
The post on the Need For Speed subreddit details what’s happening to five Need For Speed games, all of them to be delisted on May 31 (which is, at the time of writing in our GMT+8 timezone: yesterday). The games are:
- Need For Speed Carbon
- Need For Speed Undercover
- Need For Speed Shift
- Shift 2: Unleashed
- Need For Speed The Run
All in-game stores will also close today- so you can’t buy DLCs or any extra content.
The multiplayer servers for the mentioned games will close on August 31, but if you own these games you should still be able to play them offline.
“Decisions to retire games are never made easy, but we are now shifting gears to focus on the future of Need for Speed,” the Reddit post reads.
“…the number of players has come to a point where it’s no longer feasible to continue the work behind the scenes required to keep Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed and Need for Speed The Run up and running.”
While seeing old games delisted, in particular for racing games, is now an expected thing (look at the Forza Horizon series), it’s crazy that we see not one, not two but five games getting delisted at the same time.
With such short notice too. The Reddit post is only 6 hours old at the time of writing, and with so little heads-up some games have already been delisted in some regions. We can’t see any of the games mentioned on Origin anymore, for instance.
EA is obliged to give notice of server closures 30 days ahead, as stated in their Terms Of Service. But the little warning of a delisting really rubs us in the wrong way.
The Need For Speed community manager responded in the thread that the delisting is so “that is to prevent players to buy the game without having the information that the online services will be shut down in the foreseeable future.”
If you ever wanted a digital copy of any of the mentioned Need For Speed titles, time is ticking fast.