EA has pulled five Need for Speed games from sale and will be shutting down their servers

Electronic Arts is in the process of delisting five Need for Speed games, and plans to turn off their servers in three months.

In a post on the Need for Speed Reddit, a member of the development team announced that “as of May 31”, the following titles would be removed from all digital stores:

• Need for Speed Carbon
• Need for Speed Undercover
• Need for Speed Shift
• Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed
• Need for Speed The Run

The in-game stores featured in each store are also being closed today, and the online servers will then be turned off on August 31.

From that point on, the games will still be playable offline as single-player titles, but since they are now no longer available to buy online, this will only be possible if players managed to buy the games before they were delisted, or have a physical copy. Players who have digital-only systems and haven’t bought the games yet will have no way of playing them.

At the time of writing, all five games appear to have been removed from the Xbox and PlayStation stores, but are still on Steam.

“Decisions to retire games are never made easy, but we are now shifting gears to focus on the future of Need for Speed,” reads the Reddit post.

“The development teams and operational staff have put a lot of time and passion into the development, creation, release and upkeep of the game over the years, and we love to see you play.

“But the number of players has come to a point where it’s no longer feasible to continue the work behind the scenes required to keep Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed and Need for Speed The Run up and running.”

Further reading

The new Need for Speed has been delayed as EA shifts resources to Battlefield 6

“We’re going to put all the resources we have on this,” says studios boss

Reaction to the news on the series’ Reddit has been largely negative, mainly due to the fact that players weren’t given enough warning that the games were being delisted.

“Sir, to be honest you should have made this announcement about a week or so ago. Folks would’ve chance to purchase them before delist,” read one comment.

“Love how you choose to announce that ON THE VERY MINUTE the sale ends… Well I guess you don’t want my money, so be it,” added another. “Moreover, many countries already are into June 1st. It become more confusing for us.”

In March it was revealed that Electronic Arts has delayed the release of the next Need for Speed game by a year and moved developer Criterion Games into a support role on Battlefield 6.

Laura Miele, EA’s chief studios officer, told Polygon that Criterion is still handling the new Need for Speed, which will now be released by March 2023 for platforms including current and last-gen consoles.