NFS World, Battlefield Heroes/Play4Free, FIFA World shutting down July 14th 2015

[Timmy-P]

We’re constantly looking at how players are engaging with our games – listening, learning and shaping our experiences based on that feedback – and wanted to bring some news today regarding a few of our older PC free-to-play games.

Recently, we’ve been looking closely at the types of PC free-to-play experiences that players are engaging with across the world. For instance, Star Wars®: The Old Republic™ is a game that continues to have a very enthusiastic and growing player community, and we have plans to introduce more new story-driven game updates to our Star Wars: The Old Republic players this year.

On the other hand, some of our other PC free-to-play games are not as popular as they once were. So we find ourselves announcing the tough decision today that we are stopping development and winding down support for four PC free-to-play titles: Battlefield Heroes™, Battlefield™ Play4Free, Need for Speed™ World and FIFA World. These games will be live for another 90 days, after which they will go offline.

In more than five years since most of these titles launched, how we play games has changed dramatically. These were pioneering experiences, and we’re humbled that, over the years, so many of you joined us to enjoy the games and the community. While we say farewell to these free-to-play titles in the next few months, we are always exploring new concepts and ways to bring great games to more players around the world.

http://www.ea.com/news/update-on-a-few-of-our-free-to-play-pc-games

Support FAQ: http://help.ea.com/en/article/support-ending-free-to-play-pc-games/

NFS World blog post:

The Race is Coming to an end.

After five years on the race track, Need for Speed World is about to run its last lap. The free-to-play PC action racer will be permanently shutting down its servers on July 14^th 2015. Purchases of SpeedBoosts will be disabled as of today.

When it launched 2010, Need for Speed World brought together best-in-class action racing with an unparalleled social experience on PC. However, five years on, we feel that the game no longer lives up to the high standard set by the Need for Speed franchise. The steady stream of live content kept our players engaged but unfortunately we were not able to keep pace with feature development. At this point, the major overhaul needed to bring the game up to speed is not viable for us, so after careful review we came to a decision to stop development and begin winding down support of Need for Speed World.

We’re still leaving Need for Speed World on for a couple more months. If you have a balance of in-game currency, we encourage you to spend it before July 14^th. While you can spend the currency you already have, we are disabling the functionality to purchase SpeedBoost, as well as the ability to register new accounts, from now until the closing date.

It’s been a great ride. We would like to thank our community for a wonderful five years. We’re grateful for the time we spent together.

Need for Speed World development team

https://world.needforspeed.com/news/article/52361?sourceid=nfsw7009〈=en&newsLang=en&locale=en_US

This is a shame. I played NFS World on and off, and it was a blast any time I played. Many people (me kind of included) argue that there was a lot of wasted potential, ie obsolete anti-cheat, more cars, more driveable areas, drifting, etc., but despite those things there was a lot going for this game. This also marks the second Racing MMO in the NFS Franchise, the first under an obscure name years ago...

Thoughts? I'm sure going to miss it... Can't say about the others, haven't played any of them says P4F, only for a few minutes.

[Weak1ings]

It's "Just EA killing another of it's games after not enough profit"

 

Same thing happened to Battleforge.

[terrytek]

Nooooooooo, before i found any other games, this was the only good game i would play 24/7. So sad to see it go. I would cry the day they go off.

[PillowSmoke]

RIP BATTLEFIELD HEROES D:

[terrytek]

RIP BATTLEFIELD HEROES D:

Seriously? That game's dead now? I guess i'm really behind on news when it comes to origin.

[PillowSmoke]

Seriously? That game's dead now? I guess i'm really behind on news when it comes to origin.

gg 6 years invested into that game.

[Timmy-P]

So apparently this is hitting most of the more dated F2P games EA has, not just World. I updated the post to extend to that.

Damn, this is a bit worse than I thought.

[terrytek]

Great, i only relied on EA for free games. Now EA is making us pay for games now. Let's boycott EA in protest of shutting down these games. They're still massively popoular.

[fojacko]

It's "Just EA killing another of it's games after not enough profit"

 

Same thing happened to Battleforge.

EA Logic is simple... Investors want more money so EA change the game to be more p2w, when people leave the game because of said changes EA makes the game more P2W to factor in for those players that left. The cycle continues until there is few people left and its too late for damage control.

BFH could have been saved earlier on, but they left making weapons available for purchase with free currency (for permanent duration) too long and too expensive. This could've been prevented by making all guns available with free currency but for a timed period.

This all being said, i firmly believe the company is working on something else. I know for a fact that Need for speed world and the 2 battlefield games had not recieved a update in a long, long time. The engines are outdated to the point where BF Heroes was running into issues where the engine could not handle any more appearence items. If EA isnt dumb about this, they should release a new Heroes game. The game had a lot of potential (how many third person shooters with rpg-like features do you know?) but since it was created during the birth of f2p games, they were among the first to figure out how their monetisation system should work and unfortunately for fans of heroes, they fucked up badly.

[KenJimmY]

NFS World its been dead for 2 years now - no new cars / tracks / anti-cheats / nothing .. just recycling old stuff n thats it + cheaters roming the streets 24/7 - thats when the real Devs left / got fired .

[Syntaxvgm]

NFS World its been dead for 2 years now - no new cars / tracks / anti-cheats / nothing .. just recycling old stuff n thats it + cheaters roming the streets 24/7 - thats when the real Devs left / got fired .

I enjoyed it a bit at first. 

[Diederik_Gr]

I'm glad Heroes is closing, each series of new guns just became more bs, we got magnetic snipers at a certain point. As for World, that's sad news, made a lot of friends and was one of the only games i really enjoyed on my crappy laptop.

[bry.yyyy]

RIP My money at NFS World

And fuck you EA i stop giving money to you from now on

[HippY]

It is completely understandable

There were several Free to play games, that got its income from microtransaction (Any company who would run these games would do that, as they are not charities...(

And now, when it is really not profitable, only a few people played them, they shut it down

It is time to renew BF free to play series and NFS in general they knew it as well. 

NFS is keeping quiet even though it was released every year, it means they are about to renew the series, in my guesstimates

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

World still had a couple of hunderd thousand active players.  The "new" devs (not EAsy but the replacement skeleton crew of the old Quicklime) did mostly sort out the cheating problem and players were slowly coming back. 

The devs also had just introduced a new (more balanced) track rotation schedule which must have cost plenty of time, so it really was a corporate decision to kill the entire F2P branch rather than just the games that didn't make a profit.

Knowing EA, they will not release the server coding, so we'll probably never see private servers replacing the official ones.  Then again, never say never, Atari never released TDU1's coding either and someone did manage to get a server up anyway.

 

I don't regret a single dime, in fact had much more fun than I would have had if I had spent the money in the pub. 

 

AFAIK there's no replacement for NFSW, sadly.  The Crew is so bug-ridden that it looks like they simply made a semi-working beta, took the pre-order money and never bothered to complete the game.  Forza Horizon is an Xbox game so that's a big no-no, ... and what else is there ?

 

Guess I'll be getting my open-world cruising fun the old way.  Time to try re-install TDU 1, that Project Paradise mod/server looks interesting.   Oahu, here I come !

[PillowSmoke]

gg 6 years invested into battlefield heroes.

[deviant88]

NFS World was the biggest wasted potential i have ever seen.I hate corporations they dont know what gaming is all about,they just see potention for some money release a game based on something that was popular and then have no idea what to do.

A game that has 3 million followers on Facebook,i know less popular games that have <100k and gets more content and fixes and is more fun than this.

 

Games need to return to the passionate developers imo,back from the claws of stupid corporations,conglomerate of fucktards who want profits but probably never played a video game in their life.Publishers need to die in this digital era,and studios should never sell themselves or their franchise to publisher corps.

[samcool55]

I still remember trying the nfs world beta good times, it was great back then.

[PhantomJaguarr]

 

 

AFAIK there's no replacement for NFSW, sadly.  The Crew is so bug-ridden that it looks like they simply made a semi-working beta, took the pre-order money and never bothered to complete the game.  Forza Horizon is an Xbox game so that's a big no-no, ... and what else is there ?

 

World of Speed by Slightly mad Studios, but still they haven't released their Closed Beta when the game was announced back in Feb 2014

[marldorthegreat]

No, EA can do whatever they want. They own the games. They are a private coporation and should not have to listen to a few angry idiots on the internet. They make decisions that benifit them and them alone. They dont listen because people still buy there games, they control the industry.  And like you will not buy another EA game *cough* battlefront 3 *cough*.

[iAsuno]

I still miss those fb games they shut down.... Specifically restaurant city. *sob*