EA pulls the plug on five Need For Speed titles ahead of August shutdown

In all, five older games will eventually be shut down Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed and Need for Speed: The Run,

By: HT TECH
| Updated on: Jun 01 2021, 21:24 IST

Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed (Electronic Arts)

Game publisher Electronic Arts on Monday announced on a public forum that it was delisting the entries for five of its older Need for Speed games from online stores, ahead of their impending shutdown later this year.

In all, EA will remove five games from stores – Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed and Need for Speed: The Run, a community manager for the company announced on Reddit. The company says it has also shut down in-game stores in these games, which were all released before 2010.

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The company says that the decision to delist these games comes ahead of the “retirement” of the online services for these games on August 31. This essentially means that starting September, gamers will not be able to play with these friends as the “online” components of these games will not be able to connect with the game publisher's servers.

While you can still play the game to its full potential until September, online matching and multiplayer features will stop working at the end of August, unfortunately. “From September 1st 2021 onwards, you can still play the games and use the respective offline features of these titles,” the post states.

EA says that the company took the decision to focus on the future of Need for Speed. “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,” the community manager explained.

For users who still want to play online, the post states that relatively newer titles like “Need for Speed Most Wanted (2012), Need for Speed Rivals, Need for Speed (2015), Need for Speed Payback, Need for Speed Heat and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered” will continue working and are available via the company's EA Play subscription.