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

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Army of Two and Need for Speed spin-offs named in EA's online death list

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.

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

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.