The latest victim of our burgeoning all-digital present is Aliens: Fireteam Elite on the Nintendo Switch, whose servers were recently shut down. Developer Cold Iron Studios announced this beforehand, but the lead time provides little comfort to players who can't access the game at all - and can't get refunds either.
Back in March, fans of the multiple xenomorph shooter received a message saying it'd be going offline. This was due to the release being removed from the eShop. Jump forward five months, and it's gone, and due to it needing remote servers to be playable in any form, it's now inaccessible, re-opening discussions about how anti-consumer current practices are becoming.
See, Aliens: Fireteam Elite is purely remote multiplayer, and that means the devs have to maintain cloud servers to keep it up and running. Without infrastructure to allow owners to make their own servers, once a game like this goes down, it's gone, and that's what just happened, and there's no compensation even though the thing you paid money for has been taken away.
"They should offer refunds for these games if they feel like they can simply take them away on a whim," says a commenter on Reddit. "This is why I hate the push towards digital and cloud gaming. Gonna see a lot of this sooner or later," another adds.
It's worth pointing out this is only for the Switch version; the game is still readily available on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam. The sequel, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, comes out on August 26 for all of those platforms except Switch 2, where it'll arrive on an as-yet-unspecified date.
Nintendo fans who love blasting Xenomorphs can't win on this one, and, given Sony's intention to end physical discs, it feels like another harbinger of what games are becoming. Digital may feel more convenient, but relying on it too much can lead to anti-consumer practices like this, where the thing you paid for suddenly disappears and there's nothing you can do about it.
