Today is a sad day for fans of classic Need for Speed games. Those include Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed, and Need for Speed The Run, which will all be delisted from digital storefronts today.
This comes to use directly from Need for Speed community manager Max Myrus, who broke the news on the Need for Speed subreddit.
“Decisions to retire games are never made easy, but we are now shifting gears to focus on the future of Need for Speed,” wrote Max. “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. But the number of players has come to a point where it’s no longer feasible to continue the work behind the scenes required to keep [these games] up and running.”
Carbon, Shift, Shift 2, The Run, and Undercover will still be available to download if you already own the game, but you won’t be able to purchase any of these older Need for Speed titles and neither will you be able to use the in-game stores to purchase cosmetics (if such a store exists).
Online services like multiplayer will remain available until August 31, but after that, all five games will become single-player only.
While news of servers being shut down is always a blow to any game community, judging by the Steam Charts player counts, there aren’t too many players left to anger on these old games. Need for Speed Carbon and Undercover have Steam user counts in the hundreds, while Shift is down to just a few dozen players monthly.
As for the future of Need for Speed that Max was referring to, a new game won’t be coming until at least 2022. That’s because Criterion has been conscripted to help out with the development of Battlefield 6, while the recent Codemasters acquisition will still give EA its required annual racing game.
