Electronic Arts has sneakily revealed that a handful of its classic Xbox 360/PS3 era titles are having their servers shut down later this year, those being Crysis 3, Dead Space 2, and Dante's Inferno.
EA hasn't officially announced that these titles are having their servers shut off, with Pure Xbox having instead noticed that all three were recently added to the mega list of games the publisher plans on closing down online services on its official website (thanks Eurogamer). The offcial deaths of these three fairly beloved titles begins next month on September 7, as Crysis 3's servers will be shut down on this day. Since Crysis 3 Remastered doesn't have multiplayer, that game will be unaffected.
Dead Space 2 and Dante's Inferno will both then have their online servers shut down a little over two months later on December 8, alongside several Battlefield titles including Battlefield 1943 and Battlefield: Bad Company 1 & 2. Unlike those Battlefield titles, both Dead Space 2 and Dante's Inferno will still be purchasable via digital storefronts since their multiplayer modes aren't baked in or the main selling points behind either of them.
You may be sat there surprised that both Dead Space 2 and Dante's Inferno even had multiplayer modes, but they did have a couple of neat little modes that you could use to kill time. Dead Space 2 had a little 4v4 team deathmatch mode that pitted a team of humans against a team of Nercomorphs.
Dante's Inferno didn't have anything in terms of true multiplayer, rather it had a fun little co-op mode that launched alongisde its Trials of St.Lucia DLC. It goes without saying that both of these modes will be inaccessible come December 8, so if you want to check them out before they're shut down for good, you'll want to do it sooner rather than later.
This news probably won't come as a surprise to many of you, especially since a lot of you might not even be aware that Dead Space 2 or Dante's Inferno even had multiplayer. All three games having their servers shut down are well over a decade at this point, and it's difficult to imagine them still having bustling communities. Still, it always sucks to see games taken offline after so long, even if it is an inevitability. We should probably be glad that EA even kept them up for so long really.
In other EA news, the publisher recently announced that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has a PS4 and Xbox One port in development, sparking outrage from fans annoyed that the current-gen version of the game is still suffering performance problems.