EA has announced via Twitter that on July 31st, the remaining PS3/360 games in the Battlefield series will be delisted from digital storefronts before having their online services cut November 7th, 2024. The games affected are Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, and Battlefield: Hardline.
There are a couple of things to understand about this announcement. The first is that this is only for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the games. The PC versions will remain available, as will the PS4/XBone versions of Battlefield 4 and Hardline. The other important point is that the single-player offline modes will still be available.
This follows a similar announcement last year that saw Battlefield 1943 and the Bad Company games delisted, followed by a shutdown in December. This announcement is perhaps less impactful considering 1943 and the first Bad Company were console-exclusive games, whereas the games in this round have ports elsewhere, but it does suck for anyone who isn’t on the latest hardware and is still playing these games.
Personally, I haven’t thought about these games in years, mostly because I don’t play much in terms of multiplayer. I got Battlefield 3 (for PC) around launch and quickly fell out with it. I had almost forgotten that BF3 was a PS3-era title. Back in the early ‘00s, I was big into Battlefield 1942. A few years back, EA relisted it on their Origin platform, but then Gamespy shut down, which was what hosted the server listings. So, EA delisted it again, which is pretty lazy because fans were able to patch the server browser to allow the game to function again.
That’s EA for you. They’re generally uncaring toward their own history. I point this out a lot, but beyond noteworthy titles like Black & White, you can’t even buy The Sims or the original SimCity; games that helped establish them as publishing giants. They’re not the worst when it comes to preservation, but they’ve definitely proven themselves to be uninterested.
