Today's the last day you will be able to download a few old Need for Speed games in online storefronts.
According to Need for Speed‘s community manager, Carbon, Undercover, Shift, Shift 2: Unleashed, and The Run will no longer be available from digital storefronts starting May 31, 2021. Hence, if you want to purchase these games, you'll have to buy them now. However, the games will also have limited functionalities even if you end up purchasing them. Electronic Arts will retire these games completely by August 31, 2021. While you can still play online games with your friends until then, online functionalities will cease. The games will remain playable, but only with the offline game modes.
The decision to retire games is usually made based on weakening online playerbases. Developers will start shifting their resources to other programs and to make room for new games. “But the number of players has come to a point,” says the community manager, “where it's no longer feasible to continue the work behind the scenes required to keep [the Need for Speed games] up and running.”
This won't be the first time that a publisher decides to retire games wholesale. Earlier this year, we also reported Ubisoft's decision to retire old Tom Clancy games. This will likely won't be the last, either. Players move from one game to another all the time, and it's already a great feat to keep online functionalities for a game up and running for a whole year.
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