logo
Three hit games owned by 21 million fans going offline forever in weeks as players warned to ‘complete' before deadline

Three hit games owned by 21 million fans going offline forever in weeks as players warned to ‘complete' before deadline

Scottish Sun21-05-2025
Look out for refunds from one of the titles
POWER OFF Three hit games owned by 21 million fans going offline forever in weeks as players warned to 'complete' before deadline
THREE major video games are due to go offline for good in a matter of weeks – and two will become totally unplayable.
The third will lose all access to online services and support, but you'll still be able to access it via an offline mode.
5
Millions of console owners will be affected – including Xbox players
Credit: Microsoft Xbox
5
PlayStation owners will also be hit by the game closures
Credit: Sony PlayStation
Millions of players across consoles and PCs will be affected by the shutdowns, all of which are taking place in June.
And it'll affect sports games, shooters, and a hit horror title too.
GAME SERVER CLOSURE #1 – XDefiant
Shutting Down: June 3, 2025
Ubisoft shooter XDefiant is due to shut down in a matter of weeks.
The game is currently available on Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5, and Windows – but not for long.
Despite launching just one year ago (May 21, 2024) – and reaching a high of 11 million players – the game is about to be killed off for good.
"Thank you for your incredible dedication and support of XDefiant, Ubisoft said.
"We regret to inform you that we are initiating the sunset process starting today, December 3rd, 2024.
"As a result, new downloads, player registrations and purchases will no longer be available. Season 3 will still launch, so stay tuned for more updates to come.
"The servers will remain active, and the game will be fully playable until June 3rd, 2025."
Get an inside look at the new PS5 30th anniversary edition
Ubisoft said that players who purchased the Ultimate Founders Pack will get a full refund automatically.
And if you've made any VC or DLC purchases since November 3, 2024, you'll also be fully refunded.
This will take about eight weeks to process.
Ubisoft admitted that the news would be a "disappointment", adding: "We deeply appreciate the time and passion you have invested in our community."
5
Doomed shooter XDefiant is due to go offline for good
Credit: Ubisoft
The game is due to go offline on June 3, 2025.
There's no offline mode, which means there won't be any way to play the game following the shutdown.
GAME SERVER CLOSURE #2 – Resident Evil Re:Verse
Shutting Down: June 29, 2025
Resident Evil Re:Verse is also shutting down, with just over a month until closure.
The multiplayer game was released in October 2021, bundled in with Resident Evil Village (which sold 10.5 million copies).
But it's due to be killed off for good on June 29.
"This is to inform you that service will be ending for Resident Evil Re:Verse, which comes packaged with a purchase of Resident Evil Village for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, or Steam," Capcom explained.
"The application and all of its related DLC will no longer be available for download or purchase."
5
Resident Evil Re:Verse will soon be totally unplayable
Credit: Capcom
Capcom continued: "Resident Evil Re:Verse was developed in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Resident Evil series, and your overwhelming support for the game has far exceeded our expectations since the time of its release.
"Now that we've reached a new turning point for the series, we feel that Resident Evil Re:Verse has served its original, celebratory purpose admirably.
"We are incredibly grateful for your warm support for Resident Evil Re:Verse, and we deeply apologise for bringing you this disappointing news."
The game is already no longer available for download, and its DLC has been scrapped (as of March 3).
Then as of June 29, gamers will no longer be able to play the title.
GAME SERVER CLOSURE #3 – Madden NFL 21
Shutting Down: June 30, 2025
American football fans will lose online support for Madden NFL 21 at the end of June too.
The 2020 title reportedly sold well, according to game-maker EA, although we don't have exact figures.
5
Madden NFL 21 is losing all online support in a matter of weeks
Credit: EA Sports
But in any case, the now-aged title is due to have its servers shut down for good.
"Thank you for your loyalty and passion for Madden NFL over the years," EA Sports said.
"As of June 30, 2025, online services, support, and in-game purchasing for Madden NFL 21 will be retired."
Madden Points are already no longer available for purchase in the game (as of April 1).
OTHER GAME CLOSURES COMING UP
Here's what to watch out for... MultiVersus - May 30
xDefiant - June 3
The First Descendant - June 19
Black Desert - June 26
Resident Evil ReVerse - June 29
Madden NFL 21 - June 30
Arizona Sunshine - July 1
Skyworld - July 1
Danmachi Battle Chronicle - September 29
WWE 2K24 - September 30
Madden NFL 22 - October 20
PGA Tour 2K21 - October 30
NBA 2K24 - December 31
But it's still possible to use any existing balances until June 30.
Then on June 30, any of your unused Madden Points will expire.
The only upside is that you can still play the game offline after June 30 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, and PC.
But all online services, support, and in-game purchasing will shut down.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Gaming peaked with the PS4 and I want the PS6 to recognise that
Gaming peaked with the PS4 and I want the PS6 to recognise that

Metro

time11 hours ago

  • Metro

Gaming peaked with the PS4 and I want the PS6 to recognise that

A reader is frustrated with the current state of gaming and hopes that the PS6 will be a simple and straightforward console, that focuses on single-player games. After watching Xbox self-destruct this week, I have to say that, as a PlayStation owner, I'm not happy about it. I'm a PlayStation owner , not fan, and I am under no delusions that Sony is interested in me for anything other than the contents of my wallet. They're not my friend and if left unchecked, without any direct competition, they will be as anti-consumer as the law allows, and then some. So, I'm not pleased that PlayStation has beaten Xbox, quite the opposite. If not for the Xbox 360, Sony would've served up the PlayStation 3 just as it was and expected us to swallow it all down with no complaints – high price and no games. If that had continued, then who knows what we'd have to be putting up with by now. We'll be in exactly that position but worse with the PlayStation 6, if things go badly. At least with the PlayStation 3, Sony still recognised that their main job was to make a powerful console with good exclusives. Nowadays all Sony seems interested in is doing the absolute minimum effort, while chasing the dream of a successful live service game. Sony will be celebrating the failures at Xbox, not because it was ever particularly close competition, but because now they've got free reign to do whatever they want, with no other choice for people other than the Switch 2. Although the good games keep coming there's a lot to be worried about with gaming at the moment, and I'm already concerned about the rumours that the PlayStation 6 is going to be a hybrid console or a portable and a home one, like the next gen Xbox. I don't want any of that. The hybrid will compromise the graphics and a portable will be expensive and compromise on graphics. All I want is for the PlayStation 6 to be a normal console with normal games. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. I know that might not seem very adventurous but as far as I'm concerned gaming peaked with the PlayStation 4 and the more we move away from that, in terms of time and the attitude of Sony – and, for what it's worth, Microsoft – the more it feels like the whole concept of gaming is leaking away. For years now we've had mobile gaming, free-to-play, microtransactions, and live service games eating away at gaming, and very successfully too. Mobile is the most common way for people to play games nowadays, while the games they do play on consoles and PC are usually just one of a dozen or so 'forever games', many of which have been out for a decade or more. I hate all of that. If you're into them then great, I'm not trying to take it away from you. I just want what I like to exist as well, but at the moment it barely does. Sony is so off the ball this generation it's as if they're not even playing. They know what people want but they're point blank not giving us it, in favour of playing roulette with the idea of having a hit live service game. All I want is a boring, ordinary console: powerful, quiet, and ideally not the size of a house. I don't want it to be portable or to have 'innovative' controllers or any other nonsense. I just want it to put all its effort into running games and that's it. Wanting a boring console isn't a bad thing, it just means I want Sony to provide a format and let the games speak for themselves. Proper games, not forever games, and ideally primarily single-player games. Just like it was on the PlayStation 4. More Trending I have no idea whether any of my pleas will be answered but if the PlayStation 6 is a gimmick console, where most of its games are live service titles, then I'll be lamenting the collapse of Xbox all the more. By reader Carlton The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: After 24 years of wasted potential the Xbox dream is finally dead - Reader's Feature MORE: Rainbow Road in Mario Kart World is the best track ever – Reader's Feature MORE: Square Enix should hire the Expedition 33 team for Final Fantasy 17 - Reader's Feature

After 24 years of wasted potential the Xbox dream is finally dead
After 24 years of wasted potential the Xbox dream is finally dead

Metro

time16 hours ago

  • Metro

After 24 years of wasted potential the Xbox dream is finally dead

A reader thinks this week's mass layoffs mark the end of Xbox, as anything other than third party publisher, and laments the missed opportunities of the last decade. So it's finally over. After nearly a quarter of a century, Xbox has finally reached the point of no return. It may continue as a brand, a third party publisher like EA or Ubisoft, but the idea of Xbox being a console manufacturer on par with Sony and Nintendo is deader than the dinosaurs. Although in hindsight, Microsoft was never really a contender. I am saying this as someone that has owned an Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. I sold the last one after a year, once I realised I'd backed the wrong horse, so I'm not going to pretend that after this week I'll never buy Xbox again, because I never was going to anyway. But now I feel better about my decision, especially if it doesn't put any money in the pockets of Phil Spencer and co. I'm not going to gloat over the fallout from the layoffs this week, especially as Spencer has still got his job, but it really is shocking how badly Microsoft has handled this and how, after all this time in the business, they don't really seem to have learned anything. Apart from a five-year period in the mid-2000s the whole brand has been nothing but an abject failure. The first Xbox was released late in the sixth generation of consoles and in some ways could be regarded as the most successful one, since it's the only Xbox that didn't come last in its generation – beating the GameCube by a few million. Both were miles behind the PlayStation 2 though, so Microsoft quickly dropped support for the console and rushed to get the Xbox 360 out early. This sort of worked, because it meant the Xbox 360 had a year head start on the PlayStation 3. More importantly, it had some really important new ideas. After the Xbox started to push online play and Halo became its biggest hit, Xbox already had a big point of difference with PlayStation. The PlayStation 2 didn't have a built-in modem or any real online capability, until Sony was pushed to start experimenting with it because of Microsoft's success. The Xbox 360 took full advantage of that and not only put online play front and centre, it introduced the concept of digital downloads and indie games on a console, as well as achievements. The Xbox 360 was new and innovative, whereas the PlayStation 3 was late, overly expensive, and with no interesting exclusives. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Xbox 360 not only had Halo but also Gears Of War, Fable and things like Oblivion and Mass Effect, which were originally Xbox exclusives. It was the lead format for all games that generation, or at least the first half of it. The problem with the Xbox 360 is that its golden age really was just five years. It was in the same generation as the Wii and Microsoft couldn't resist trying to copy it, but with 'better' technology. They released Kinect in 2010 and that was the beginning of the end. Kinect never worked properly, it never had any decent games, and yet Microsoft became so obsessed with it they bundled it in with the Xbox One and made the console stupidly expensive, underpowered, and focused on TV more than games. It was, of course, a disaster. The problem was, so was the Xbox 360 really. Thanks to rushing it out early the red ring of death cost Microsoft over a billion dollars to fix and at the end of the generation they were still beaten by the Wii and PlayStation 3 anyway. The Xbox One was beaten by the PlayStation 4 and Switch (but hey, it beat the Wii U!), and the Xbox Series X/S has, again, been beaten by everything. Not that sales are any sign of whether something Is good or not, but it helps put into perspective how Xbox has never been a true challenger. They've only ever been big in America and the UK and that soon started to change with the Xbox One. What also changed at that time is Phil Spencer taking over. Just as a reminder, that's 11 years ago now and what is the legacy of his time in charge? Two failed consoles and no improvement in first party output, except for from Activision Blizzard and Bethesda, which he spent billions buying. He didn't seem to realise that came with strings attached and within months Microsoft was pushing for Xbox to go multiformat and increasingly not bothering to promote the console, as sales tanked. Almost every month now, more and more of what made Xbox a console manufacturer is chipped away, and it seems obvious that all we're going to be left with is Activision Blizzard and Bethesda – companies that were already perfectly fine on their own, until Microsoft bought them. The only way is down from here on in and laying off 4,000-odd staff, and cancelling a bunch of games, seems the obvious place to draw a line under it all. Not only because of that but because almost half the 9,100 job cuts at Microsoft his week were at Xbox. The company obviously has it in for gaming and no matter how many gaming T-shirts its execs wear the pretence that anyone at Xbox cares about gaming is impossible to believe now. More Trending Xbox had it all: a successful, innovative console and the backing of the world's richest company. But it frittered all that away in just a few years, to the point were, in hindsight, it's been running on fumes for the past decade. I wish I could say otherwise but Xbox is dead and in truth it was barely ever alive in the first place. By reader Ashton Marley The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: Rainbow Road in Mario Kart World is the best track ever – Reader's Feature MORE: Square Enix should hire the Expedition 33 team for Final Fantasy 17 - Reader's Feature MORE: I bought GTA 5 for the third time and it's still one of the best games ever - Reader's Feature

Insomniac Games rumoured to be working on three games – but what are they?
Insomniac Games rumoured to be working on three games – but what are they?

Metro

timea day ago

  • Metro

Insomniac Games rumoured to be working on three games – but what are they?

The creators behind Ratchet & Clank and Marvel's Spider-Man are said to be juggling three games at once, and only one has been announced so far. The PlayStation 5 might be a disappointment when it comes to Sony exclusive games, but one first party developer has definitely not been letting the side down. Since the PlayStation 5's launch in 2020, Insomniac Games has released three games on the console – cross-gen title Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Marvel's Spider-Man 2. The studio is currently working on another PlayStation 5 exclusive in Marvel's Wolverine, which was announced back in September 2021 but still doesn't have a release date. However, it seems this project is only one of many titles currently in development at the studio. According to a rumour on Reddit, derived from a LinkedIn post from an employee at the studio, Insomniac is working on three games in total at the moment. The studio, which employs around 520 people (two or three times the size of most other AAA developers), has worked on three games simultaneously in the past – so this isn't as unlikely as it sounds. Former project director Erin Eberhardt, who left the studio in September 2023, confirmed in July of that same year that an unannounced game was in development at the studio, along with Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. We still don't know what this unannounced game is, or if it was shelved, but an Insomniac leak from December 2023 outed the studio's future slate, at that time, up until 2031. This included a Venom spin-off slated for autumn 2025, Wolverine for autumn 2026, Spider-Man 3 for autumn 2028, a new Ratchet & Clank for autumn 2029, an X-Men game for autumn 2030, and an unspecified new IP in 2031. More Trending While it's likely these plans have changed since then, perhaps the biggest question is if the Venom half-sequel, which was slated for this year, still exists. A side mission in Spider-Man 2 appeared to set up Carnage for a future title, but it's unclear if that symbiote story will roll out over a half-sequel like Miles Morales or the inevitable Spider-Man 3. It was reported by VGC that Spider-Man 2 only used 10% of the dialogue that actor Tony Todd recorded, which may be an indication that a half-sequel was at least planned. Todd sadly died in November last year, so if he didn't already record absolutely everything Insomniac needed that would cause great problems for a future Venom appearance. If the Venom game has been axed, the third title could be Ratchet & Clank. However, considering Spider-Man 2 sold significantly more than Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, at over 10 million sales versus around four million, Sony might be pushing for more Marvel titles from the studio. If Wolverine is still slated to come out in autumn 2026, we could see more from the title later this year. So far, we've only seen cinematic trailers, with gameplay still yet to be revealed officially. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Here's every game cancelled by Xbox after devastating job cuts MORE: Xbox bosses loved a game so much they canned it and sacked all the developers MORE: The 10 best video games of 2025 so far – half year report

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store