(12/March/2025)
As you might already know many new games have online only requirements.
Sometimes these requirements are only for parts of the game such as multiplayer.
But sometimes the whole game requires you to be online to play it.
All of this can lead to unforeseen consequences.
This makes me question “Do I really own any of these games?”.
No I don’t, and neither do you.
Unless you can play it offline you don’t own anything.
Some games like live services (Fortnite for example) tell you this upfront, but that’s the difference right there, they tell you that you’re renting access to the game.
With live services you know what you’re getting into before you actually buy anything.
When you buy a game that isn’t a live service you’d expect to actually be able to use that game, and that said game won’t be made unusable by the developers at a later time.
This is not even close to a full list of games that are at risk of being deleted from existence, nor is it a complete list of games that already have.
This is a few of my personal experiences with games that I’ve played/once “owned”, and no longer have access to.
Let’s start with Titanfall 1.
A very good, but unfortunately neglected series.
This was the first online only game I ever got.
Because it was the first I didn’t fully understand what the “Requires xbox live” label really meant at the time.
I figured it was referring to online multiplayer, but it was actually the whole game that is online only.
I knew at the time that the game was multiplayer focused, but what I didn’t know was that the campaign also took place in multiplayer.
Although the game is still playable (sort of), like many on this list it won’t be forever.
You can’t even buy the digital version of the game anymore.
Titanfall 1 is an old game now (2014) even if the servers are still online the player count is very low.
It’s unfortunate that such a good game doesn’t have an offline with bots mode, or the ability to host your own server.
It’s only a matter of time before it becomes a $60 coaster.
Titanfall 2 is also likely to have the same unfortunate fate one day.
Speaking of $60 coasters, you might’ve already heard of the next one: The Crew.
As I’m writing this I turned on my Xbox One to see my list of games, only to find The Crew has been completely removed from my account (I had the digital version).
The Crew has been entirely deleted from existence.
No private servers, no offline mode, just gone (like your money) like it was never there in the first place.
Another game that one day won’t be playable in the future is both Destiny 1 and 2.
I have my own regrettable experiences with the Destiny series, but that’s a topic for a different time.
If I knew Destiny was going to be online only I might’ve not purchased it.
Right now Destiny 1 is basically abandoned, but still playable for now.
There are 2 issues Destiny 1 is dealing with.
1. It’s on the Xbox 360. The 360 is on it’s last legs as of 2025. With the online market shutdown, and with most multiplayer games having low population I can’t imagine online multiplayer lasting much longer.
2. Bungie won’t keep the servers on forever. Especially if they are not making money by keeping them online.
Ether one of these events can cause Destiny 1 to become another lost game.
One game that makes no sense in why you can’t play offline is Black Ops 2.
Yes the single player story mode is playable offline, but that’s not the issue.
The multiplayer has a bot mode, but you can’t play it offline.
Why someone would put in a bot mode for multiplayer, and make it so you can’t play it offline is beyond me.
Even now some live service games that I play regularly (Fortnite, Warframe, Call of Duty) are at risk of becoming lost media one day.
Yes they are popular games, and they won’t be shutting down any time soon, but they will one day.
And it’s that future day that I’m concerned about.
If non-live-service games are at risk of being lost, the future for titles that are live services doesn’t look very good.
Stuff like this is one of the reasons why so many people say things like “older games were just better.”.
It’s not simply some old people stuck in the past.
Old games didn’t have online only requirements that prevented you from playing the game.
They didn’t have crazy monetization, or gambling like so many modern games (2015-2025) do.
Old games couldn’t be removed from your account (because they were on disc/cartridge), or deleted from existence.
Additionally old games had local multiplayer, so even if you couldn’t play online you still had split screen, or LAN.
It’s not all doom and gloom though.
Some companies have started re-releasing their once live service games as stand alone titles.
One company that comes to mind is Nintendo.
As much as I often dislike them as a corporation I can’t pretend they don’t do good things at times.
Their game Animal Crossing Pocket Camp (formerly a live service free to play mobile game) shutdown.
After the free to play version of Pocket Camp was shutdown they published a paid non-live-service version of the game.
Doing so successfully preserved the game for the foreseeable future, and they probably made some additional profit from it too.
Footnote: It’s not a 1 to 1 version of the game. Some items that were from crossover events are not available in the re-release. But this is mostly understandable, Nintendo is unlikely to still have the license to these crossover characters. The reason I say “mostly” is because there is no reason Nintendo can’t have pokemon characters when gamefreak is basically a branch of Nintendo.
If this topic of game preservation is interesting to you, you might like to check out the website https://www.stopkillinggames.com