Discontinuation of online services

The discontinuation of online services refers to the online portions of a game or system becoming limited or unavailable through normal means. Online services can be discontinued due to lack of profit, lack of population, or because it's too old and a successor was launched. For online-only games, particularly MMOs, having online services discontinued means that the game becomes practically unplayable without fan servers.

Notable discontinued services

 * 1) Some consoles discontinue their online services after the system itself is discontinued because a successor was released with its own online services. Examples include:
 * 2) *Xbox Live was discontinued for original Xbox games consoles in 2010, telling players to upgrade to Xbox 360, preventing players from playing games such as Halo 2 online using the Xbox Live system. Games with LAN support can use a program to connect to other players online, however services connected to the Xbox Live service are unavailable.
 * 3) *The DSi Shop was discontinued on March 31, 2017, and topping up DSi points stopped on September 30, 2016, thus preventing anyone from buying DSiWare (you can still buy DSiWare from the 3DS, however, few exceptions apply (i.e the original Flipnote Studio and the Nintendo DSi Browser) Despite this, all the remaining DSiWare will be delisted in 2023 due to the 3DS eShop closure).
 * 4) *WiiConnect24 was discontinued on June 28, 2013, therefore causing the Forecast Channel, News Channel, Check Mii Out Channel (Mii Contest Channel in Europe), Everybody Votes Channel and Nintendo Channel to stop functioning.
 * 5) **However, RiiConnect24 was created to restore this function
 * 6) *Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection was shut down on May 20, 2014. This has disabled all online functionality for Wii and the Nintendo DS line games. Some third-party games that did not use the Nintendo WFC brand are still available.
 * 7) *The Wii Shop Channel remained active beyond the Nintendo WFC shutdown, it was discontinued on January 31, 2019. Also, the purchasing of Wii Points was discontinued on March 26, 2018, making it practically defunct for players who have no more Wii Points. If not for video game piracy, the store exclusives would've been completely lost to time.
 * 8) *The PlayStation 2 online service was discontinued on April 2016. Call of Duty 3 is the only game on the PS2 that remains active online on its official servers, with a few others running on fan servers via DNAS workarounds.
 * 9) *The PlayStation Store on the mh:awesomegames:PlayStation 3 and mh:awesomegames:PlayStation Portable and the PSN Store on the PlayStation Vita were planned to shut down on August 27, 2021, however, they quickly changed their decision due to fan backlash, though there will no longer be any new games added to the PS Vita's store, and the PSP's store closed on July 2, 2021. The only way to purchase PSP games would be to download them from the PS3, and then transfer them to the PSP.
 * 10) * Had it gone ahead, the PSP Go would be rendered completely useless outside of piracy, and games that are already downloaded onto the system beforehand. As of now, you can only get games for the PSP GO via the PS3 store.
 * 11) *Miiverse was discontinued on November 7, 2017, leading to the WaraWara Plaza being treated like how the player is offline, and many features like uploading to YouTube for certain titles being discontinued.
 * 12) *The Nintendo Wii U and Nintendo 3DS eShops are shutting down on March of 2023, and you will no longer be able to add funds directly to these systems after August 29, 2022 (however, you can still add funds on Switch and Nintendo.com), meaning that users won't be able to purchase digital games on either system. This means that many, many games on the platform will become abandonware (even DSiWare), and therefore, completely lost to time if not for online piracy. Not only that, the only way to legally own retro games from Nintendo after this point would be to buy the original cartridges and hardware that they've been released on.
 * 13) *Since the DSI and Wii Shops ran on a single server, during mid-March 2022, both stores were taken down without warning, no longer allowing the user to redownload games, delete their shop accounts, or download the transfer tools for each respective system. However, Nintendo stated that this was for maintenance, and that one day they may be brought back.
 * 14) Sony has a habit of shutting down servers for their games each year, and games that are online only such as SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Confederation, The Tomorrow Children, MAG, Kill Strain, Destiny of Spirits, Warhawk,, (with the exception of LAN mode) Drawn to Death and StarBlood Arena are no longer playable, the only Sony games that tend to last for long are Media Molecule and Naughty Dog games. (Uncharted 2 and 3, and The Last of Us PS3's online was shutdown as of September 4th,2019)
 * 15) * Daybreak Game Company, previously known as Sony Online Entertainment, shut down notable MMORPGs like The Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies and Free Realms.
 * 16) Battleborn was a massive commercial failure when it first launched in May of 2016, due in fact it was released before two weeks before Blizzard released their new IP, mh:awesomegames:Overwatch. One year later, Gearbox announced that Battleborn will be a free trial before scrapping updates for Battleborn, and left servers on for the "foreseeable future". In November of 2019, 2K announced that Battleborn will shutdown servers in January of 2021, removing the game from digital stores, and disabling in game purchases for the game's premium currency on February 24th, 2020. Starting January of 2021, Battleborn was rendered unplayable, and all Battleborn discs became e-waste.
 * 17) Ratchet & Clank Deadlocked, Size Matters, and Up Your Arsenal's servers were shut down on February 14, 2018.
 * 18) Club Penguin was shut down on March 30, 2017 in favor of Club Penguin Island which that game got shut down on December 20, 2018 killing the entire Club Penguin franchise for good. Well, everything but Club Penguin Game Day on the Wii, and the Club Penguin Elite Penguin Force duology on the DS, however, their coin transfer feature was already removed in 2014 following the Wi-FI connection closure.
 * 19) The shutdown of part of the Gamespy matchmaking service in 2012 and then all of it in 2014 left many classic PC games requiring fan-made patches to get multiplayer working again. Electronic Arts, being EA, decided to make this even harder by demanding that fan servers for Battlefield 2 and 2142 shut down in 2017, claiming their intellectual property was being infringed.
 * 20) Online-multiplayer only games keep coming out constantly these days and many of them fail very quickly, often because they were chasing popular trends, then their servers shut down. Some examples include LawBreakers, Radical Heights, The Culling 2, among others.
 * 21) Some companies negotiate licensing deals in such a way that games have to be removed from digital download services entirely when they expire: Activision is particularly guilty of this, having done it with games based on all the TMNT, James Bond and Transformers licenses.
 * 22) Electronic Arts shut down online for 2 of the best FIFAs ever made, FIFA 13 and FIFA 14, on October 18, 2017 for 14, and July 3, 2017 for 13. Fans were angry about this and often beg for EA to bring them back.
 * 23) Taito shuted down their Bust-A-Move Islands' North American servers on June 15, 2015 and the service for the LINE version on December 4th 2018, they later re-released Puzzle Bobble Journey as a paid app instead of them.
 * 24) Microsoft shut down the online servers for all the Halo games on Xbox 360 in December 2021. Their reason is that it takes more time to manage their servers.
 * 25) The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Theft Auto Online shut down in December 2021. Also, the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Max Payne 3 will have their online multiplayer shut down in October 2021.
 * 26) The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and it's Metal Gear Online component will shut down in May 2022.
 * 27) Several of Nintendo's mobile games get discontinued, typically if they are unsuccessful, or if they aren't popular anymore. Examples include:
 * 28) *Dr Mario World shut down after 2 years.
 * 29) *Pokemon Rumble Rush shut down after about 1 1/2 years.
 * 30) *Dragalia Lost was discontinued in July of 2022.
 * 31) *Miitomo, Nintendo's first mobile game, got discontinued in 2018, likely due to the small player base.
 * 32) Several examples of quick online shutdowns include;
 * 33) *WAVE!! Naminori Boys, a tie-in Japanese mobile game based on the WAVE franchise, shut down in a record three days after its disastrous launch, from March 1st to March 4th of 2021. The launch was plagued with bugs, typos, and placeholders. During that time, after a prolonged maintenance, it was then announced that the game was going to be shutdown. It was only available for three days.
 * 34) *When it comes to online competitive games, Smash+Grab only lasted three weeks due to the developer, United Front Games going under.
 * 35) *The NHN otome game AFTERL!FE only lasted six months before shutting down, from June 2020 to December of that same year. which makes this one of those mobile games to shut down due to marketing issues & lack of players.

Where to find games that are/already shutting down its servers
Sony's game servers page

EA's titles with server closures

Ubisofts's online service update page

Game dev's Twitter accounts

Inside manuals in any 2K published game (mostly NBA and WWE 2K titles)