Ugh. Why!?
[Update: Since posting this EA has removed Mirror’s Edge from the list of games to be delisted. It was definitely there when the announcement first went out, which suggests that they’ve since decided against delisting. Our original story follows.]
EA has announced that it will be removing four titles from storefronts on April 28, 2023. The titles are Battlefield 1943, Battlefield: Bad Company, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and Mirror’s Edge, all of which are from developer DICE. The reasons for their removal are the discontinuation of online services for them, which is unusual, since three of those games feature single-player campaigns, with Mirror’s Edge in particular only using online for leaderboards. The online portions will stay active until December 8, 2023.
The news strikes me as quite sickening. EA has proven to be one of the worst companies when it comes to maintaining the availability of its legacy products. Games like The Sims and The Sims 2 are both games of monumental importance to the landscape of the video game industry and they are not available for digital sale anywhere, despite their lack of online integration.
Considering the company was founded in 1982 on the concept of promoting their developers like rock stars, their lack of respect for the art form in which they compete is consistently galling.
While I personally didn’t jive with Mirror’s Edge, the game is a cult classic that was so well-loved that fan fervor alone managed to land it a new entry in 2016. It is not an online-focused game, and there is no really understandable reason for EA to pull it from digital shelves aside from the fact that they apparently have no intention of preserving it.
You have until April 28, 2023 to pick these titles up from various storefronts. Note, however, that Battlefield 1943 has no single-player content. As for the other titles, the press release mentions you can continue to use their offline features.
