EA to 'retire' online support for Army of Two and 16 other games past their prime

Army of Two, Skate, NHL 10 and Need for Speed Most Wanted are among a handfulof EA games slated to become local co-op only over the next few months. The mega-publisherrevealedit will be ending online support for seventeen of its older titles in order to redirect itstalent andresources toward titles that are, you know, actually being played online.

The bulk of the online shutdowns will begin on August 11th, with Madden NFL 10 and NHL 10 online servers to go dark on October 1st. The full list is below:

August 11, 2011 Online Service Shutdown
ARMY OF TWO™ for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
ARMY OF TWO™ Demo for Xbox 360
Battlefield 2142™ Demo for PC
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat™ for Xbox 360
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat™ Demo for Xbox 360
Medal of Honor Airborne™ for PlayStation Portable
Medal of Honor Heroes™ 2 for PlayStation Portable and Wii
NASCAR® 09 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (North America)
NCAA® Basketball 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NCAA® Football 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Need for Speed™ Most Wanted for PC and Xbox 360
Need for Speed™ Undercover for PlayStation Portable;
SKATE™ for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 10 for PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 11 Demo for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360

October 1, 2011 Online Service Shutdown
Madden NFL 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NHL® 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360

According to EA, the discontinued service shouldn't affect too many people, as less than 1% of its active online userbase still played the selected games.

“The decisions to retire older EA games are never easy. The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired,” reads EA's post, explaining,“It’s feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99% of customers playing our more popular games. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage.”

I was genuinely planning toget back into Army of Two with a buddy who lives overseas, but to be fair, we're probably some of the only ones who keep a copy of Army of Two kicking around. See any titles you'll miss playing online?

Jul 13, 2011

Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acting as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries.