Artist’s conception of EA taking aim at the digital storefronts hosting three legacy Battlefield games.
Electronic Arts
If you want to secure a legitimate copy of Battlefield 1943 or either of the two numbered Battlefield: Bad Company games, you only have a few weeks to purchase them from various online marketplaces. Electronic Arts announced Tuesday that it would remove the older titles from all online storefronts on April 28.
EA says the move comes as the company “shift[s] our focus towards our current and future Battlefield experiences.” The announcement also cites “preparation for the retirement of the online services for these titles,” currently set for December 8.
But the server shutdown argument doesn’t fully explain the delisting of the Battlefield: Bad Company games, which both include single-player campaigns that don’t require any server resources on EA’s part. Our 2008 review of the original title specifically called out the “strong” single-player campaign and its “colorful characters with a high level of witty banter.” Players that buy the Bad Company games before the April delisting will still be able to enjoy all offline features, EA said.
“There comes a time in every game’s lifecycle when it makes sense for us to remove it from online stores,” EA writes on an FAQ page.
Tuesday’s announcement originally included that 2008’s Mirror’s Edge would also be removed from digital storefronts on April 28, but a follow-up tweet Tuesday afternoon called that inclusion an “error.”
Today’s news comes a few months after EA announced the shutdown of online services for 13 games, most of which were originally released at least a decade ago.
Online services for other legacy Battlefield titles were shut down in June 2014 as part of the death of the GameSpy service. In 2017, EA took legal action to shut down unofficial fan-run servers for those games.
In 2014, EA temporarily offered free downloads of The Sims 2 Ultimate just before it ceased support for the title ahead of The Sims 4 launch. And last year, it made a wide swatch of DLC for BioWare games free as it shut down the legacy “BioWare points” system originally used to sell them.
