Titanfall Pulled From Digital Storefronts

A game being pulled from sale isn’t too common of an occurrence. Sometimes it’s because the game isn’t in a playable state, such as what famously happened to Cyberpunk 2077. Other times, it’s because a remaster is coming out, so the original version is taken off shelves. We just recently saw an example of that with Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition when the original games were delisted, the remasters were then delisted for a short while because of unintentional leftover files, and finally, the original games were brought back.

Sometimes there isn’t a proper explanation and communities are left scratching their heads, such as just a few weeks ago when I talked about Bandai Namco’s surprise delisting announcement for Jump Force. Now, not even one month later, we have another game that has become digitally unavailable. Respawn Entertainment announced on Twitter yesterday that sales have ceased for the original Titanfall game, and it has been taken off of digital storefronts.

Both Titanfall and Titanfall 2 faced a myriad of issues related to hackers and DDOS attacks on their servers this year. These attacks even spilled over into Respawn Entertainment’s current prime focus, Apex Legends.

Although Respawn Entertainment became a lot more attentive to the issues plaguing the Titanfall games, especially the original, one look at its Steam page and its reviews will say all you need to read to understand how the community felt abandoned by the developers. I suspect some of the few positive reviewers might skew their reviews to be more negative following this news.

Considering that Respawn Entertainment did manage to make the game playable for a lot more people than it had been for a while, the announcement that it would be pulled from sale after fixing it does seem like strange timing. The game is seven-years-old, and as a multiplayer-only title, there’s no real surprise that it would be pulled off store shelves once its servers were being taken down. Though, that isn’t what’s happening here. Titanfall’s servers are remaining up, it’s just that the game won’t be available to purchase for any potential new players.

Many are taking this as a sign that the game is being abandoned for real. No matter how old a game is, cutting off any potential sales is a good way to put a cap on the existing community numbers. There’s also much less, if any business-related reasoning, to keep supporting Titanfall if it isn’t being sold anymore. I’m hoping they do continue to keep a small eye on it in case the game begins to suffer from hacking again, but it seems like the writing is on the wall.

I am a big fan of Titanfall 2, and while I never had the chance to play the original, I’m well aware of how important that game was at influencing many of the FPS that came after it. Thinking about it realistically, it’s not surprising at all that it would eventually stop being supported. The abrupt way this is being handled though feels a lot less like a sad goodbye and more like a quick cut of losses. Certainly, many in the community feel it’s at odds with the messaging that “Titanfall is core to Respawn’s DNA,” no matter how much they repeat it or add Titanfall-related characters into Apex Legends.

Sales may have been discontinued for Titanfall, but those who play through subscription services can still play it until March 1, 2022. The servers will also stay live for players, but no timeframe has been given for how long that may be true. Titanfall 2 is unaffected by this so players can still get their titan and pilot action fix with the sequel if they please, even though it still won’t be quite the same experience.