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EA Shutting Down Servers For ‘The Sims 2,’ ‘NBA Jam’

Electronic Arts (EA) is shutting down servers for a number of its games early next year. In addition to The Sims 2, the game’s official website will also quietly fade away.

Warped Zone reports that EA is ceasing online support for several titles, including a few from its EA Sports line. Players who still enjoyed sitting down for a quick online match in Madden NFL 11 will no longer be able to do so after January 11.

The company is also shutting down servers for NBA Live 10 and NBA Jam. This leaves NBA Jam: On Fire Edition as the only Electronic Arts basketball title that currently supports online play.

Although shutting down servers for older sports games makes sense from a business standpoint, closing the doors on The Sims 2 seems strange even the title’s continued popularity. According to Cinema Blend, the game still has a very strong following online and quite a few expansion packs to support.

“The decisions to retire older EA games are never easy. The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired. But as games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles to a level — fewer than one percent of all peak online players across all EA titles — where it’s no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99% of customers playing our more popular games. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage.”

In short, it’s out with the old and in with the new. You can check out the complete list of games the company will no longer support below.