EA Delists Five Older Need For Speed Titles; Servers Shutting Down In September

Electronic Arts is pulling five older Need for Speed titles from digital storefronts. And it’s doing so very abruptly too. If you love some of these titles but never got around to getting them, it may already be too late.

The quiet announcement came via a Reddit post. In it, an EA community manager says that the publisher will be pulling Need for Speed Carbon, Undercover, Shift, Shift 2: Unleashed and The Run. The online servers of these games will also be closed in three months. And this is done so that the publisher can focus on working on the new games in the series, the upcoming one already being delayed. But doing so means moving resources from maintaining the older ones.

As mentioned, the announcement came very abruptly. At the time of writing, the Reddit post is stated as being up 10 hours ago. But the announcement itself says the delisting of these older Need for Speed games will happen starting 31 May 2021. Even with time zone differences, this would mean that at best there’s a couple of hours left before they are gone.

If you already own these games though, you’ll still be able to play them normally. Online functionality will remain until 1 September, when EA shuts down their servers. Beyond that, offline is the only way you’ll be able to play these Need for Speed games.

Epic Games Allegedly Offered US$200 Million For First-Party PS Titles On EGS

The ongoing Epic Games vs Apple legal battle is a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes goings-on in the video games industry. Many of these appear as official court documents, some unintentionally. A new one that falls in that category has revealed something new, that’s both surprising and not at the same time.

The now deleted document suggests that Epic Games tried to offer Sony Interactive Entertainment US$200 million (~RM821.2 million) to have first-party PlayStation titles on the Epic Games Store. Said documents mentions the above amount as a minimum guarantee for four to six titles. Though it’s unclear if the amount is for all the games, or just a single title.

A number of them have indeed made their way to PC, though not necessarily as EGS exclusives. Most notable among them is Horizon Zero Dawn, which is also available on Steam. Ditto the upcoming Days Gone PC port. According to PC Gamer, ReadySet Heroes is one title published by Sony that is currently still exclusive to the EGS. Predator: Hunting Grounds is now also on Steam following a year of timed exclusivity.

Of course, Epic Games didn’t only approach SIE for this. The company also had a back and forth with Microsoft, but faced resistance from the latter’s Game Pass side of things. And as it turns out, Microsoft was also in talks with Valve. As for Nintendo, it appears that Epic did not even bother, since their “corporate history says this is a non-starter”.

Overall, while it’s not publicly known if SIE took the deal, it’s the one that probably the most likely to succeed. The two companies may have had their disagreements, especially when it comes to crossplay. But SIE did invest US$250 million into Epic Games.

Esports Titles For Hanoi SEA Games 2021 Have Been Announced

Following the last SEA Games that took place in 2019, it’s time to prepare for the next instalment of 2021. This time, it’s Vietnam’s turn to host. And the country has decided on which titles will be included in its esports events.

Eight titles have been chosen as medal events for the Hanoi SEA Games 2021. The games are Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, League of Legends and its Wild Rift mobile variant, Arena of Valor, PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, CrossFire and FIFA Online 4. The list is posted on the Malaysia Esports Federation’s Facebook page.

It’s an interesting selection of games, to be sure. From the looks of it, they are all free-to-play titles, and a majority of them are on mobile. Half of them also happen to be of the MOBA genre. They are also mostly team events, with only PUBG Mobile getting an individual category. Titles that were in the previous SEA Games like Dota 2, Hearthstone, Starcraft II and Tekken 7 are notably missing.

The Hanoi SEA Games 2021 will take place between 21 November and 12 December. As you’d expect, all 11 countries in the region will be participating in up to 40 medal events, of which esports is one of.

Xbox Head Confirms Some Bethesda Titles Will Be Exclusives

Back in September last year, Microsoft announced that it will acquire Bethesda’s parent company ZeniMax Media. Many thought that, as a result, some of the publisher’s IP will become exclusives to the former’s platforms. At the time, Xbox head Phil Spencer said that this will be examined on a case-by-case basis. Now, the company has confirmed that indeed not all games will be available on the PS5.

This follows the green light being given to the acquisition by the US and the EU. Spencer says that this is “the next step in building an industry-leading first-party studios team”. Though it’s not clear if this only applies to new IPs, or if new entries of ongoing series will also potentially be platform exclusives.

Ultimately, this should not come as a surprise. After all, the entire reason a company will spend US$7.5 billion in acquiring another is to bolster their first-party lineup. It would make little sense to spend that sort of money and not have any exclusives to show for it.

But as long as Xbox game all ultimately end up on PC, then it’s no real loss for us. After all, Xbox has no official presence in Malaysia, and our only real access to their games is via PC.