Another year, another rash of closures for the online components of EA’s old sports games. Maintaining those online components takes resources, after all, which the company would much rather devote to current and upcoming titles. The games shutting down on January 11 include the entire 2011 EA sports lineup as well as NBA Jam and NBA Live 10, thus terminating the most recent online NBA game in EA’s library.
It isn’t all about sports, though. EA is also shutting down the online component of The Sims 2 on both PC and Mac only three days later, on January 14. The “exchange,” which was used for trading content between players, is available until then, but EA is unable to retrieve lost usernames and passwords at this time, meaning that those who haven’t used it in a while are out of luck. Though this in no way affects the actual Sims 2 game, it does feel like the end of an era, in a way.
Source: GamesIndustry International