EA Announces Closure of Most of its F2P Games

Patrick Söderlund, Executive Vice President of EA Studios, has announced a few closures of the free to play games in the EA stable in a statement released yesterday.

The dwindling popularity of the games seem to be the chief reason behind these shutdowns, as explained by Patrick.

Some of our other PC free-to-play games are not as popular as they once were. So we find ourselves announcing the tough decision today that we are stopping development and winding down support for four PC free-to-play titles: Battlefield Heroes™, Battlefield™ Play4Free, Need for Speed™ World and FIFA World. These games will be live for another 90 days, after which they will go offline.

The affected games will be closing for good on July 14, 2015, and all progress will be deleted. Players have been asked to use up their in-game currencies as there will not be any refunds, while new purchases and account registration are made unavailable.

EA has announced that Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances, the browser-based free to play strategy game will change development studios, with Envision Entertainment taking over. More details can be found here.

With the trimming of EA's free to play offerings, the focus of their efforts seems to be finally centered on Star Wars: The Old Republic, with new content promised this year, in this excerpt from the announcement.

Star Wars®: The Old Republic™ is a game that continues to have a very enthusiastic and growing player community, and we have plans to introduce more new story-driven game updates to our Star Wars: The Old Republic players this year.

Looks like the Jedis dodged the bullet this time round...

The full announcement can be found here.