“We’ve made the decision to discontinue new sales of the original Titanfall game starting today and we’ll be removing the game from subscribption services on March 1, 2022,” reads the post. “We will, however, be keeping servers live for the dedicated fanbase still playing and those who own the game and are looking to drop into a match.” Titanfall has had a rough recent history. It came to Steam late last year but in a borderline unplayable state. Bugs prevented players from connecting to servers, and those that did manage to connect were normally met with hackers exploiting vulnerabilities in the game’s aging multiplayer code. Titanfall 1 - and modern spin-off Apex Legends - have also experienced regular DDOS attacks. In April, Respawn tweeted that “help is coming ASAP” to deal with the attacks, but nothing materialised. At the time of writing, Titanfall has “Mostly Negative” reviews on Steam. Although Titanfall technically remains playable, few players currently do. It’s a sad end for what was a good game. Here’s what handsome former editor Graham Smith (RPS in peace) said in his Titanfall review: I retracted much of my praise two months later, however, when Respawn removed its best mode. Titanfall 1 can be seen as a halfway step towards the live service games of today. It was unusual in 2014 for a major first-person shooter to launch without a campaign, and still relatively new for a multiplayer game to launch without dedicated servers, a server browser or mod support. That’s all commonplace now, and no one seems to blink an eye when Apex Legends ditches one mode or map for something new. The difference back then was that Titanfall wasn’t free-to-play, and paying £45 for something that began to disintegrate so soon afterwards didn’t feel great. So, yes. While Titanfall remains ‘playable’ for those who bought it, its removal from sale ends all hope that it will be supported or repaired. The graveyard of multiplayer games will only grow larger, and I hope one day GOG or a similar service begins the work of restoring them, just as they did the DOS games of yore.
