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Need For Speed Carbon, Shift, And More Getting Delisted From Digital Storefronts

Publisher EA is preparing to discontinue the online services for several older Need for Speed titles, including Carbon and both Shift entries.

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Several older Need for Speed games will be removed from digital stores and have their in-game economies shuttered starting May 31, publisher EA announced. Online services for these games will cease operations in August.

Carbon, Shift, Shift 2: Unleashed, The Run, and Undercover are the Need for Speed games that are being prepared for retirement. All five games will no longer be purchasable from digital storefronts and players can't participate in their in-game economies to buy things like car parts and currencies. Online services such as leaderboards and matchmaking will stay active until August 31, at which point all five games will be relegated to strictly offline play.

Community manager Max Myrus took to the Need for Speed subreddit to deliver the news, explaining why retirement for these games has come.

"Decisions to retire games are never made easy, but we are now shifting gears to focus on the future of Need for Speed," Max said. "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 Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed and Need for Speed The Run up and running."

This news isn't too surprising considering the age of these games, with the oldest on the list being Need for Speed: Carbon (2006) and the youngest being Need for Speed: The Run (2011). EA has published six other Need for Speed games since The Run; the latest was 2019's Need for Speed Heat.

Various Need for Speed games are on EA's subscription service EA Play, including Heat, Payback, and Rivals. The publisher will host an all-virtual EA Play Live on July 22. Though it's unclear if a new Need for Speed will surface, fans might get information about Battlefield 6 and Dragon Age 4.

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Atzenkiller

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Edited By Atzenkiller

So as soon as EA shuts down the servers and you can't spend money on MTs any longer a game is no longer worth selling to them. Or do all of those games require an internet connection and so are no longer playable now?

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CJ_Topspin

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CJ_Topspin

Just saw a roll-over accident caused by these racer types. 4 dead - all kids. Too bad they can't separate the video game fiction from reality.

Sorry for the downer...but, after seeing that, I lost the taste for these "rebel racer, dirty cop" video games.

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lonewolf1044

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@cj_topspin: Yes, it is horrible to witness an accident, but it cannot always be attributed to the games as most may have not played or even heard of it and it may due the person overestimating what they are driving. Meaning some may drive an Ferrari but the driver is not experienced enough to handle it.

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deactivated-64a3ced8b46b8

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deactivated-64a3ced8b46b8

@cj_topspin: I'm very sorry you had to see that, but ascribing it to videogames is a stretch. You could just as soon blame it on the FF movies, (and it would be just as misplaced).

In the end, a tragic event like that should be used as a way to discuss responsibility and common sense, not finding ways to blame various forms of media, (in this case, videogames).

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CJ_Topspin

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Edited By CJ_Topspin

@thecupidstunts: I completely agree with you.

It less of a "videogames caused this" kind of thing and more of a general culture supported by media kind of thing. Whether its the FF movies, NFS games, etc. After seeing that accident I was more curious as to why these kids do this, take over intersections, race on streets occupied by normal citizens, etc.

If you dig into the culture you see that a lot of these people imitate what they see in the movies, videogames, etc. that deal with that street racing culture. Now it is THEIR responsibility to not kill people - not the entertainment medias job to ensure they don't - I get it. Which is why I wasn't BLAMING media...simply lamenting the stupidity in humanities inability to appropriately digest it.

Now imagine if NFS showed a bunch of 16-17 year olds dead on the pavement from racing with their family screaming behind the yellow tape...

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deactivated-64a3ced8b46b8

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deactivated-64a3ced8b46b8

@cj_topspin: I see what you're saying here, and I don't disagree with your thoughts.

Maybe my response to you should have been a more general one as relates to how there seems to be an alarming increase in "blame mentality", as opposed to taking these opportunities to teach accountability and responsibility.

Obviously, various forms of media have always been low-hanging fruit for groups/individuals who want to try and explain what is wrong with our society, but it doesn't address the real issues, and blaming but not acting is almost an art form now.

Thanks for the response. 🙂

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HesamB

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HesamB

@cj_topspin: mate are you alright? what type of logic is that.

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lonewolf1044

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@HesamB: I agree in some aspects as some people who are involved in accidents may have never touched or played the game and only drive it fast because they fail to understand that fast cars need to be driven with great responsibility as no matter how fast, how nice or mediocre the car anything can happen and all parties involved can die or be severely injured, but it is horrible still to witness an accident.

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Thanatos2k

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Quality by EA again.

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deactivated-64a3ced8b46b8

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deactivated-64a3ced8b46b8

I loved The Run.

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Carpetfluff

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I mean, as much as I don't really mind too much about these particular games, this is the exact reason why having too much online reliance for content causes problems down the line - games, or whole chunks of games just become unusable - the days of being able to revisit some titles on whim are over...at least until somone decides to remaster them and sell them to you again.

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santinegrete

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@Carpetfluff: Right, I just skip games that do this sort of stuff.

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Mraou

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@Carpetfluff: Well you can still redownload and re-install a game that's been delisted, if you want to play them again on a whim. But yeah, too much online dependency can be an issue, which is why it's best to buy games for PC, where you at least have the potential option for fan servers and mods to preserve that content. Game companies don't care about preserving games in general, but consoles, as we've now learnt, are the worst platforms for actual game preservation.

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ghostgate2001

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@Mraou:

It's not some promised land over on PC, either. Plenty of older PC games either won't work at all or are horribly broken if you try to play them on OS revisions that are more recent than whatever was current when the game was released.

It's not like you've got much choice but to remain fairly up to date with your OS, and yet every time you update your OS a whole bunch of software that you "own" won't work anymore. Not just games, but also important stuff that cost far more than games, like audio plug-ins, productivity software, utilities, etc.

At least with console games it's basically guaranteed that any game created for a particular console is going to run just fine if you pop it into one of those consoles.

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Thanatos2k

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@ghostgate2001: Yeah but for those old games people usually have some mod or editing of files that allows them to work. That'll never fly with consoles.

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