EA Is Taking A Decade-Old Need For Speed Game Offline

It’s been a pretty rough year if you’re a fan of Need for Speed. With EA going all-in on a new Battlefield, it has put the series on ice and development on new content for NFS Unbound has officially ended. Things just got worse, as a decade-old entry into the series will be taken offline.

Truthfully, Need for Speed Rivals will never be remembered as one of the greats of the series. Although its gameplay was remarkably similar to the cops-and-robbers style racing of the original NFS titles and then still recent Hot Pursuit, it didn’t really hit the same, and nor did its awfully cheesy storyline with alternate endings.

Really, its most remarkable point was being the first entry into the series to arrive on eighth-generation consoles, the PS4 and Xbox One. You could also pick it up on PS3 and Xbox 360, but we probably wouldn’t bother. It was also the first developed by Ghost Games, later followed by Heat, before Criterion took the NFS licence back.

Online was a core part of Rivals when it launched in 2013, with its AllDrive system, turning the single-player elements of the game into multiplayer races. That will cease to function when servers are switched off on 7 October 2025. Good news, though, is that you will still be able to race against AI if you so wish.

For now, Need for Speed Rivals is still available to purchase on digital storefronts, but don’t be surprised to see it removed from sale once its servers are pulled. That’s happened with previous NFS titles, namely The Run, Shift, Carbon, and Undercover, all removed from sale in 2021.

Keep a close eye on the future of more NFS titles in the coming years. 2015’s Need for Speed relied entirely on online features, so it may become completely unplayable when its servers’ date with death arrives.