EA is delisting several old Need for Speed games today. The news comes from post made on the Need for Speed Reddit today by community manager Max_Joker. The games will also see their on-line stores closed and their online services shut down. The former will happen today, but online services will continue to run until August 31st. After that, players will only be able to play the games offline.
The games that are affected are Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed, and Need for Speed The Run. As of right now, all of the games have been removed from Origin and the Xbox store, but Undercover, Shift, and Shift 2 remain available on Steam, though they’ll likely be gone by the end of the day. If you want any of them, now’s the time to pick them up.
“The development teams and operational staff have put a lot of time and passion into the development, creation, release and upkeep of the game over the years, and we love to see you play,” community manager Max_Joker wrote on in the Reddit post explaining the decision. “But the number of players has come to 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 it’s not surprising to see EA take the servers offline for old games when they’re not being played, the lack of warning here stings for anyone who might have wanted to play those games. Hopefully EA will give players more of a heads up in the future.