2013 Electronic Arts Online Service Shutdowns

Zombi3 Grim said:That's not even...what? I could go back and play Maddens from the past few years and still have fun. The rosters may be a little funny, but that could just add to it. Don't get how the latest addition is the ONLY means of having fun at all.

mitchcraft1980 said:Example? The only time I do that is for the most irrelevant of conversations, like someone bragging about MySpace friends . Never for things with an actual opinion relevant to the topic.

alklein92201 said:Lets see, one minute EA are the scum of the earth the next you defend them, one minute people who gripe about games not having achievements are losers then you do it your self, you then say people who only play shit games for achievements are sad then you say they are not..

I am not the only person to notice you constantly change your views from one minute to the next.

I never hated EA. Obviously I don't like server shutdowns, but I still believe it's good business for them to do it, and don't feel like they're bad people for doing it. It's not that I changed my opinion, I just don't feel entitled to have access to the servers, even though I may not like it.

I've never complained about DLC or games not having achievements. As for playing crap games for achievements, yes I changed my mind quite a while back. Because while I may not agree with it, who are we to tell someone they have fun wrong?

Yeah yeah post what ever you want to try look the better person in front of everyone but i remember all our conversations and how they lead to us talking and it certainly was not through what tripe you just spewed out there.

iheartslampigs said:I agree with this, I play NHLPA 93 here and there still, and it's still quite fun. I will assume he meant to get any enjoyment out of the online play vs randoms, which would be true to an extent if you are talking about a game that has ghost towned or the remaining community has gotten too good.

I don't think that would necessarily just apply to sports games even. I don't think it would be fun playing against the flying invinsibles of World at War. I recenly tried a Saint's Row 2 quick match and didn't have fun at all because it was me level 1 vs several max levelled players. Maybe that was bad luck, but I bet I would have had more fun if I had tried it when the game was just released because hopefully the skill level would have been closer.

How much money are they really saving by shutting down the servers? If no one is playing them much anymore, the bandwidth should be next to nothing right?

Joker De Pablo said:It's not just bandwidth. It's maintenance, management, and paying people to do these things. Then, they can use these servers for other games instead of having to buy servers.

alklein92201 said:And that's what most people will believe or EA would have most people believe. Clearly works.

And this ladies and gentlemen, is why I hate EA with a burning passion.

EA can shutdown all their servers. There online gaming really sucks.
Hackers, glitches etc. in all of their games and they aren't doing much against it.
Fcuk EA

matdan12 said:Whether it saves enough is irrelevant, the fact is that they have to pay some amount for those things. You really think it's all a lie, and that once they set up servers they never touch them again? Never make improvements? Never have to fix something broken? Don't have to hire someone to make sure it all works right? If you honestly believe all that, you have absolutely no idea how computers are handled in a business. Again, whether or not it's expensive enough to warrant taking them down isn't my argument in that last post, but simply the fact that it does cost money -- regardless of how much.

shouldn't we be focusing on activision and their future destruction of the call of duty franchise

alklein92201 said:Just to point out nearly every game since release of xbox360 still has online so why is that EA truly need to shutdown servers all the time? Its not too hard to see that they dump their games and run unless you live in the land of naivety. Look at Crysis 2 for an example the multiplayer is shoddily done and there has only been a patch to reduce xp. Looking at NFS: Carbon and Crysis 2 I don't think they get around to fixing broken achievements either. Looking at the sport franchises as per topic a lot of features involving achievements were discontinued within months of game launch. Sure it costs money mainly because lackluster sales from lackluster games and poor use of servers.

Travis Jarvis said:When I was at the EB Gaming Expo in Sydney, my brother and I were talking to the EA ppl at the stand where they were demonstrating Need For Speed Most Wanted and one of the guys told us that EA doesn't shut down the servers as they don't control them. He said some really confusing thing which basically that they outsource the servers from other companies and that the server shutdowns for games are the result of the outsource company deciding to shut the servers down but effectively there is no server shutdowns and you could still get the online achievments in the games where the servers had supposedly been shut down.

I don't own any of the games that the servers have been shut down on but if they are shutting down the servers, then why is ea still making the games that are affected available for sale after the servers have been shutdown, as I've seen brand new copies of the 2009 and 2010 versions of these games for sale in retailers such as EB Games, JB HiFi, Target etc albeit at a reduced price.

matdan12 said:I never said they need to, only that it's more profitable for them to.

As for dropping their games and running -- their games' multiplayer wouldn't last 6 months due to server problems if they did that. Just because a game's multiplayer sucks, or because they don't put much money into their maintenance of the servers, or even a complete lack of patches, does not mean they don't spend money. Granted, they probably spend the bare minimum necessary to keep it running, but they still spend money. Crysis 2, and even all the Battlefield games up to, and very likely including, Battlefield 3, and pretty much every other EA game, would have had the multiplayer shut down long ago due to the servers simply not working right. They might not spend much money, but the multiplayer wouldn't exist if they didn't spend any.

I don't think you quite understand what server administration, especially in this industry, consists of.

Chameleon1977 said:But these games came out in 2010!!!!

ScottMacFreedom said:So Halo 3 came out in 2007 and now Halo 4 is out, people still play Halo 3. Gears of War came out in 2006 and even though Gears 3 is out and new one is on the horizon, people still play Gears 1.

What does it matter when the games were released? Is it because EA releases a new version of their sports titles every year and all the other games with sequels to them have at least a year or 2 in between?

Its release year has nothing to do with the servers being shut down. The bottom line is its all about money and profit. Game companies make more money off their newer more current titles then they do off of their old ones. And if they don't make money they can't stay in business, it is nothing more then a business decision to turn off the servers for their older titles because they are no longer profitable.

EA merely happens to be the one company who does this the most. Mainly because they have yearly titles of the same game. And other than updated graphics and new rosters how different is each sports title from its previous year?

alklein92201 said:I didn't say they did not spend money, I said they lose money because of poor server administration. If that is really the only defense you can put forward for EA then it truly proves how little you know. Sure they spend some money but considering all the cost cutting by shutting down servers within a year of a game coming out or discontinuing features promptly its not like they give many games much attention. If you look at modern Server Administration techniques you would actually realise we use virtualized servers and this effectively halves maintenance cost. If EA can't for some reason afford to keep servers up for more then a few months then they should have virtualized, Would it actually cost much to run maybe one server for most older titles with their lower community number they don't need a whole lot to keep them up.

No, it wouldn't cost much to virtualize, that's what I do for all my servers at work. But, it's still more expensive to have virtual servers than no servers. My point is, and always has been, they make the most money by doing what they do. No servers is always going to be cheaper than servers, no matter how you do it.