Three Battlefield games—but not Mirror's Edge!—are being removed from sale forever
Battlefield: Bad Company 1 and 2 and Battlefield 1943 are going away forever: Electronic Arts has announced that their online services are being shut down in December, and as a result they will be removed from sale from all digital storefronts on April 28.
Those of you with good memories may recall way back about, oh, 42 minutes ago, when we reported that Mirror's Edge was also being delisted. That, it turns out, was a mistake: Not ours, but EA's. Mirror's Edge, at least for now, is not being taken off sale.
All the games being delisted are elderly as these things go: Battlefield: Bad Company came out in 2008, Battlefield 1943 followed in 2009, and Bad Company 2 was released in 2010. But they were standout games in their day. Bad Company 2 was PC Gamer UK's shooter of the year in 2010 (back in the days when the UK and US teams did things separately), and the Vietnam DLC was brilliant. (The original Bad Company and Battlefield 1943 were console exclusives.)
But nothing can escape the relentless grind of time—not even really good videogames. "While these titles hold a special place in our heart, we’re now looking forward to creating new memories alongside you as we shift our focus towards our current and future Battlefield experiences," EA said.
The good news is that if you own Bad Company 2, you'll still be able to play its campaign offline. The trouble is that if you don't own it, as of April 28 you won't be able to, unless you score a key from some hopefully not-too-sketchy reseller. Which is a baffling decision as far as I'm concerned: Bad Company 2 has a singleplayer campaign, so why stop selling it if it's still playable? Just add a note to the store listing that the online component doesn't work anymore, knock a permanent 20% off the price, and let people play. But I am not a corporate bigwig, and so business decisions like this are apparently beyond my limited understanding of how the world works.
In the original iteration of the story, I took a moment to look back nostalgically on Mirror's Edge, a flawed but brilliant game that tried to do something genuinely different, and largely succeeded: Despite its age, it remains "the undisputed queen of parkour." There's no need for any of that now, since it's not actually going away, so instead I'll simply say that I'm not sure how you make a mistake like that, but reversing it is definitely the correct decision, if for no other reason than the fact it's strictly a singleplayer game. The leaderboards are the only part of it that will be impacted by the December server shutdowns, and let's be honest: Who cares?
If you don't own Mirror's Edge and think you might like to, now is a good time to pick it up: It's on sale in the Steam Spring Sale for $5/£4.50/€5, 75% off the regular price.