Just over a year after they launched the free to play Vita exclusive game ‘Destiny of Spirits,’ Sony has announced that they will be ending all online support for it come June 30. This would be bad news no matter how you spin it in any scenario, but when you consider that the game is online only, it means that, just after a year from its original launch, the game will become effectively unplayable.
This means that any content in the game, including content that players have paid for, will be unusable and inaccessible from that point on; any unused Destiny Orbs will also expire. Basically, it means that you won’t be able to use the services you might have paid for after a period of support of just one year.
Normally, this would be where I would make a joke about Sony dropping support for all things Vita one by one, but this is not something I can joke about, this is a worrying trend (especially as the industry slowly moves to the model of games as always connected services), and I fear that, if this trend goes unchecked, we may be in for a very consumer abusive future. For Sony, this is especially damning, in light of the news that they would be ending support for MLB 14: The Show on June 30 as well- similarly, just a little over a year after that game originally launched.
We can hope that enough people make a noise about this that Sony will sit up and take notice, but honestly, I don’t think that will happen, especially given this game’s lower playerbase.