Five favourite Need for Speed titles will be leaving you in the dust, following EA’s decision to remove them from online sale.
If you’ve got a need for retro racing games then you’ll have to satisfy it elsewhere, as EA has announced that it pulled five classic Need for Speed titles from sale on May 31, and will close online play on August 31. The affected games are:
- Need for Speed Carbon (2006)
- Need for Speed Undercover (2008)
- Need for Speed Shift (2009)
- Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed (2011)
- Need for Speed The Run (2011)
The announcement was made in the /r/needforspeed subreddit, with an official post on behalf of the EA team entitled: “Sun is setting on some older NFS titles – it’s not you, it’s us”.
Explaining the decision, the poster /u/Max_Joker wrote:
“Decisions to retire games are never made easy, but we are now shifting gears to focus on the future of Need for Speed. 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 [the aforementioned titles] up and running. We hope you have gotten many victories, satisfying drifts, moments of friendly rivalry, and hours of joy over the last few years out of these games.”
For readers of my generation, we certainly did get hours of joy from the titles back in the day when Need for Speed were the go-to racing games in the same way that Call of Duty would become synonymous with first-person shooters.
These instalments of the series took more than a few hints from the early Fast & Furious films (back when that franchise was still about street racing) and had a sense of fun that was severely lacking in the Gran Turismo games (sorry, “simulators”). Usually boasting hip-hop soundtracks, outrageously customisable cars, scantily-clad grid girls and an improbable plot revolving around petty crime, these games defined an era of after-school hijinks for many of us, and the announcement that puts an end to that era may well bring a rush of nostalgia for simpler times.
what I would give to play need for speed underground on the family toshiba laptop rn
— ⭕️ (@roomforplants) May 25, 2021
Fortunately, if you have already downloaded the games or still have the physical copies, then you can still get your garish car out of the garage, and tear around the streets just like you did in the old days, as offline play will remain accessible indefinitely.
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