Sony’s Guerrilla Games, popularly known as the video game studio behind PlayStation’s acclaimed Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West games has announced that it is shutting down online multiplayer for three of its titles in August.
The shutdown will take effect from August 12 and the affected titles are Killzone: Mercenary, Rigs: Mechanized Combat League and Killzone Shadow Fall, all of which will lose their online features.
The video game studio took to Twitter to make the announcement which said, “Online features (including online multiplayer modes) will cease on that date. Single player offline modes remain available.”
Twitter Link –
On 12 August 2022, online servers for Killzone: Mercenary, Killzone Shadow Fall (including Intercept Mode) and RIGS: Mechanized Combat League will shut down. Online features (including online multiplayer modes) will cease on that date. Single player offline modes remain available
— Guerrilla (@Guerrilla) July 22, 2022
The above Killzone games were initially launched in 2013, with Killzone: Mercenary first making its way to PS Vita and Killzone Shadow Fall released for PlayStation 4.
Guerrilla “retired” the Killzone franchise’s website in January 2021 which caused a reduction in the game’s online functionality. The studio stated that players could no longer make or manage clans in the game. The game wasn’t well particularly well received as part of the PlayStation 4 launch titles and currently has a metacritic score of 73.
Rigs: Mechanized Combat League is a first-person mech shooter/sports game that came out in 2016 for PlayStation VR.
Enjoy it while you can
Although it takes years sometimes before a studio decides to shut down a game’s online functionality, it’s a reminder that players cannot rely on multiplayer titles being around forever, and the less popular a title is, the more likely it is to get dumped further down the line.
In an ongoing and worrying trend – and clearly an indicator for the shape of things to come – Ubisoft has also announced that over a dozen of its games will be losing their online functions.
The lesson seems to be that despite purchasing a game with online features, those features can be removed with no recourse for the player.
Best enjoy those online modes while you can…
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
