Electronic Arts (EA) is shutting down a number of its free-to-play titles. In 90 days time (by around mid-July), Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play4Free, Need for Speed World and FIFA World will cease to exist.
This news comes as Patrick Sonderlund, EVP at EA Studios, announced that they will be focusing on bringing new ways of play to players all over the world. It’s a somewhat ambiguous and concerning statement.
The most concerning part is EA’s tendency to remove a method of distribution or play, only to re-brand and re-release it as the exact same thing, but that will inevitably cost the gamer more money than it did before.
We’re constantly looking at how players are engaging with our games – listening, learning and shaping our experiences based on that feedback – and wanted to bring some news today regarding a few of our older PC free-to-play games.
We’re not so sure they’re always “shaping” with the gamer in mind. For now, however, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Recently, we’ve been looking closely at the types of PC free-to-play experiences that players are engaging with across the world. For instance, Star Wars®: The Old Republic™ is a game that continues to have a very enthusiastic and growing player community, and we have plans to introduce more new story-driven game updates to our Star Wars: The Old Republic players this year.”
The Old Republic isn’t actually a very good example. As a subscription title it was a pretty solid game, but its free-to-play experience is so restricting it’s infuriating.
On the other hand, some of our other PC free-to-play games are not as popular as they once were. So we find ourselves announcing the tough decision today that we are stopping development and winding down support for four PC free-to-play titles: Battlefield Heroes™, Battlefield™ Play4Free, Need for Speed™ World and FIFA World. These games will be live for another 90 days, after which they will go offline.”
It’s sad to see these go, but we didn’t think they were very profitable and sort of expected this to be honest.
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Does not affect me since we never had SA servers and trying to play those games where just frustrating.