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by dkersten 8 days ago
Some games are perfectly fine without online features yet they still got shut off. Mirrors Edge Catalyst only used online for leaderboards and challenges, everything else was entirely single player, yet it’s not possible to play it anymore because they wanted to shut off the servers yet designed the game to not run without them, even though it’s a single player game.

That should not be ok. It wasn’t sold with a disclaimer or expectation that it could be switched off.

3 comments

This is the reason I buy many games twice: once when they release on Steam, and again (if I loved them) when the come out on GOG, with Doom Eternal being the most recent example, but also Doom 2016, Skyrim, Dying Light, Tomb Raider, etc. I want to reward the devs with money for giving me a copy that doesn't need servers to run. It's work to produce it, and it has value for me, so I don't mind paying. CDPR is particularly good about this (obviously, since they run GOG), but the fact that such an amazing AAA company has this stance is amazing to me.
> This is the reason I buy many games twice: once when they release on Steam, and again (if I loved them) when the come out on GOG

It’s the reason I buy most games once, on GOG.

> Mirrors Edge Catalyst

Are you sure? I played in 2024 on PC and it was playable.

I tried to play it about two months ago and it pops up a notice and quits. I found on Reddit that the notice is “we are Rory, but servers for this title have been shut down. Thank you very much for playing” which is roughly like what I remember.

According to Wikipedia: “in December 2023, all servers for mirrors edge catalyst were shut down by EA” but that only says online content was disabled.

It’s possible that the game is only unplayable on PlayStation, but still playable (without online features) on PC. But it does seem to still be listed in stores (steam and PlayStation) so I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. I’d have to redownload it to test it again.

It probably was sold with a disclaimer tbh.

I wish we could target this specifically.