EA has revealed that online support for Need for Speed: Rivals will officially come to an end on October 7, 2025. This announcement was first spotted by Delisted Games when a reader noted that Rivals had been added to EA’s list of games with discontinued online services. Need for Speed: Rivals originally launched on November 15, 2013, for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. The game made its way to the PS4 and Xbox One a year later, in October 2014. Players on PS4 and Xbox One, as well as those on current-gen consoles like PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, will no longer have access to the game’s online features after the shutdown date.
This move is part of EA’s broader trend of shutting down online services for older titles.
Online play has always been a major selling point for racing games, and Need for Speed: Rivals was no exception. However, while this shutdown is unfortunate for those who enjoy racing against others online, the good news is that Rivals will still have an offline mode for those who want to relive the experience. This is in stark contrast to other online-focused games, such as Anthem, where EA announced a complete shutdown of online services set for early 2026, effectively rendering the game unplayable.
This ongoing trend of shutting down online modes has sparked a wider conversation about game preservation. The Stop Killing Games movement, which started last year, advocates for legislation that would prevent publishers from taking away rights they sold to players at the point of purchase. The petition has recently gained significant traction, surpassing 1 million signatures. In response to these efforts, major video game publishers have argued that enforcing such proposals could make the development of online-centric games prohibitively expensive. Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, the creator of Minecraft, also weighed in on the debate, saying, ‘If buying a game is not a purchase, then pirating them is not theft.’ His comments reflect a growing concern about the idea that when a player purchases a game, they’re not actually buying the game itself, but rather a license to play it until the publisher decides to revoke that privilege.
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