PlayStation Quietly Shuts Down a Game's Servers With No Warning

"PlayStation has quietly shut down the servers of one of its games with no warning. More specifically, if you're wondering why you can no longer play an online match of Killzone: Mercenary on PlayStation Vita, it's because servers have been shut down. Reports of the servers being turned off began to flood in this morning, and we've since confirmed with PlayStation Support that the servers have indeed been shut off."

[Jin_Sakai]

Right after the last PS Vita owner was killed.

[deleted]

"They may take our Vitas, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM! Alba gu bràth!"

[cammers1995]

Probably a protester somewhere.

[Elda]

That's why I got rid of my Vita because Sony stop supporting it especially with first party titles. I love their home consoles but I won't buy another handheld from Sony seeing how they treated the Vita.

[Sol4ris]

In a world where the Switch exits, there is zero need for a new handheld, especially one from Sony.

[Elda]

There is always room for competition. Personally for me I won't buy a Switch because of my lack of interest of their exclusives. I'll stick to my home console of choice which takes care of my gaming needs.

[jznrpg]

The Switch is a nicehandheld but Sony could easily make a superior machine spec wise and not go the proprietary card route and support it better and it could really do well. Now will they take that risk I’m not sure but I loved my Vita and hope they do. Id love to have remote play with a Sony handheld and PS5 .

[King_Noctis]

“ Sony could easily make a superior machine spec wise and not go the proprietary card route“

Do you see the irony in your statement?

[MeteorPanda]

you mean the switch that has an aweful eshop setup, no bluetooth, having to use a phone for voice chat, controllers that are shoddy (expect the pro) horrible friend management and overly expensive games that never drop in price?

yeah lm sure this can't be challenged lol.

[blackblades]

There are still games coming to it, shouldnt abandon it just because 1st party.

[Elda]

When I buy a console I buy it because of 1st,2nd & 3rd party exclusives first & foremost,I don't buy a console solely for multi-plats knowing you can play them on other consoles & PC. My main reason to buy the Vita was because of Sony's first party support the games I was mostly interested in. Once they stopped my Vita just collected dust,so I traded it in for the SNES Mini which I happen to enjoy including adding more classics on the little box.

[goldwyncq]

Sony truly did the Vita dirty.

[JackBNimble]

And somehow Sony get's a pass and no one cares .
I personally own a vita and I do care . Sony fans are blind loyalist hypocrites.

[rainslacker]

@Jack

Sony got a pass because not enough people had the Vita to make it into a big deal. I have a Vita, and I do care that they dropped support too soon. Overall, I wasn't unhappy with the Vita, but that wasn't because of Sony's doing, but rather 3rd party support providing me with games that I was happy to play on the system.(I like the more niche Japanese games).

But, at least for me, there isn't a pass should I be in a position of having to decide to buy another portable from them. That isn't something I'd jump on board for, and I'd express that reluctance should that time ever come Sony wants to jump back into the market.

I will defend the fact that Sony did indeed support the system fairly well early on. I will criticize their decisions of the memory card, although I understand the reasons behind it. I'll praise how good the hardware actually is. And I'll criticize Sony for dropping 1st party support pretty early, and how much they neglected the system after the PS4 was a runaway success.

In the mean time, the people I see most upset about Sony's dropping of the Vita are the actual Vita owners. By a wide margin. The others that love to just criticize Sony seem hung up on other things as they try really hard to make Sony look bad in areas that they are more successful in, thus have more people that care about that stuff.

[Nitrox]

@jackB
Who’s giving Sony a pass? Vita owners (like myself also) have been very disappointed and even pissed off with the fact that support and games seemed to dry up after the first couple years. I doubt Sony will make another go at handhelds for quite some time, if ever, but if they do you can bet it will be looked at skeptically by even the biggest PS fans.

Should we throw away our PS4s and boycot PS5 because they gave up on the vita? That would be stupid and doesn’t make someone a hypocrite.

Idiot fanboys on this site need to quit constructing straw men to make themselves seem more woke than other gamers...

[DarXyde]

Persona 4 Golden in my opinion makes Vita totally worth it.

[Elda]

Nice game but I'm not going to hold on to a Vita just for Persona 4 while no other games drop that I'm interested in.

[Angrymorgan]

Plot twist...the ps5 is a handheld...dualsense doesnt have a touchpad.....its a screen 😳😳

[rainslacker]

I feel the same. I'd probably want one either way, but Sony dropped support of Vita way too quick once the PS4 took off. They didn't see the point in trying to make Vita a thing when they could just make money off their home console, and that was kind of a kick in the balls for Vita owners.

Vita was a great machine overall, hampered by some poor business decisions. It actually did have quite a few good games from Sony it's first couple years despite what people said, but Sony stopped caring about 3rd party support before 3rd party support really got going. It's a shame really, because the sales of more niche games on the system was pretty high for a portable, despite it's install base.

If Sony puts out a new portable, I'll give it time to see if they'll remedy the mistakes they made with the Vita. Until then, it'll be low on my list of things to get.

[Elda]

Agreed.

[Spurg]

hmmmm....the fact that the kill the last person who was using the vita and the killing of a server of a ps vita game. Could PSP successor be announced soon?

[RazzerRedux]

"the fact that the kill the last person who was using the vita"

What?

[monkey602]

It's a joke regarding the Last of Us 2 state of play that's going around

[Profchaos]

Could always just be a mistake and they will come back. Sony normally gives a heads up

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

Sony (and every other game company) doesn’t need to maintain servers for games with extremely low player counts.

[ColdSin]

Yes, but that is why there should be an alternative. A switch to private servers and such.

[Dark_Overlord]

Firstly, Playstation support know jack shit, if you've ever spoken to them you'll know what I mean.

Secondly, this happened a few years and they came back after a few days.

Since Sony/Guerilla themselves have not confimed it, I'd take it with a grain of salt.

[Dark_Overlord]

To all the disagreers, don't you feel silly now, the servers are back up ;)

[jznrpg]

That game is old and Vita has been out of production so I’m not surprised but a heads up would be nice . It could be a mistake but I’m not sure

[rainslacker]

Sony does typically announce when they're going to disband a server. Usually there is a few months lead time. There was one game a couple years ago where they only gave a couple weeks, but I can't remember what it was.

[Jsm89k]

Yeah this happened a few years back and there was an announcement.

[Indigon]

It´s a Vita game. The Vita has not been on sale anymore for years in my country.

[littletad]

This is why I buy all third party games on Xbox, hell even Nintendo rarely shuts down servers as quickly. No online game can go on forever though, so it was probably a right move by Sony, but they should have given their fans some warning.

[tigertron]

Damnit, I was hoping to play some Mercenaries.

[chiefJohn117]

Not a good look at all

[Ricegum]

Neither is free to play games behind a paywall but hey ho.

[chiefJohn117]

Deflect, nice lol

[RookieMonsterLives]

On PC, ALL games are free to play online without a sub. But hey

[Spicyram]

O God now Sony's reputation is in the gutter what a complete tragedy. / s

[chiefJohn117]

Said no one...

[sushimama]

https://www.resetera.com/th...

[Silly gameAr]

Wow, the headline made it sound like it was a major PS game, but it was a Vita game. I hate it when people get all dramatic for no reason.

[Hayter456]

Yeah one of the best and major Vita games?..

[Silly gameAr]

Well, everyone cracks on the Vita and says no one owns one. Some of those people are even in here acting like they're so hurt and upset about this news.

I don't believe the outrage. Sorry.

[Jrios355]

"This sentence is a question"

[rainslacker]

One of the best? Yeah it seems well received.

Major though? Was it really? Friend of mine was upset a while back because whenever he wanted to play the game, he could never find anyone playing online. Won't say that there was never anyone playing online, but a dead server is a dead server. Some people say other companies are awesome for keeping their servers running, but do they actually go into those games and try to play against others....and if so, are they finding matches?

[Hayter456]

Pretty much all Wii U online servers are still up and its free Microsoft are pretty good at keeping servers going for a long time..360 servers are all up. Sony have bad habit of closing online games early look at some PS3 games. If anyone else did that fanboys would be all over it. Those who need the online trophies hack you vita and unlock the online trophies. Sony a warning would have been nice?

[CrimsonWing69]

That’s a pretty Shitty thing to do. At lest make an announcement that it’s happening. Same thing for when they’re about to take down a digital game. I hate when it just happens without warning.

[monkey602]

We could dispute the reasons for server shut off on any game but to do it without warning is a scummy thing to do. At least let some people give it a farewell run or something.

Myself and others had a few nights racing before the Driveclub shutoff and it was a great time

[Chaos_Order]

I have very fond memories of this game's online, hooking up to the company Wi-fi and playing while at work. ;) It was surprisingly good, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more than Shadow Fall's online. The shoulder mounted rocket launcher that used the touch screen and remote control drone that crushed enemies' skulls were awesome. Proximity mines were OP though. XD

I'm sad that it's gone, but it's been a couple years since I've played and all servers must come to an end at some point. If Sony had announced it was shutting down in a few weeks I would've probably hopped on for a few final games.

[Loktai]

My god nobody cares that it is actually amazing that games servers were still up half way into 2020 given that the vita is like a holiday 2011 release and it sold badly because of the crappy name among other things. Can you name a system that sold 10-15 mil units and was produced for seven years with official game servers still being up for years?

Saturn sold similarly and sega abandoned it totally after about 4 years. Dreamcast sold similarly and 1st party support was dead in like 2 years after US launch with all segas games going to the Xbox and ps2... yet people gush over the Dreamcast all the time.

People can feel sad but I don't agree with anyone who feels righteously indignant over this , seriously.

The game is 7 years old. The studio who made it shut down in 2017.

[ParanoidFreak]

A heads-up, at minimum, to those still playing would have been at least respectful. The fact that they didn't even bother just shows that these corporations don't care about YOU -- just your $$$ money *at the time of initial sale*

No current manufacturer is any different. This applies to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo equally

[mastershredder]

“More specifically, if you're wondering why you can no longer play an online match of Killzone: Mercenary on PlayStation Vita, it's because servers have been shut down. “

A Killzone game for Vita? That’s news? Jezzus you are desperate.

[S2Killinit]

Didnt they already say that Vita was no longer going to be supported? Does this mean that they need to give a new warning everytime a first party game gets pulled off? I mean dont get me wrong, maybe that is how it should be, but i dont recall ever seeing that with past consoles of any console manufacturer. Am I wrong here?

Honestly,Im asking.

[rainslacker]

In this case, I feel it's a decent thing to give a warning. People will still bitch about it, but in the end, the majority really won't care.

I can't speak for everyone about every game, as I know there are people that prioritize different games, but the only server being shut down that I really wasn't too happy with was Driveclub, and it's variants. Not because I wanted to do online races, but because some of the features....and thus trophies, were tied to needing online to get them, and after all these years, I was widdling away at getting the plats. The game is still playable as a racer offline, but I'll never complete the trophy list for them. Ultimately, not that big of a deal, but still something to be annoyed over.

[LoveSpuds]

I would be willing to bet that there have been no players using these servers for many months, if not years. Sony should have made the public aware of the decision i guess, but it is hardly the big deal this article is tying to make out.

[SonyStyled]

I played 3 mp matches last week. It was a full 4vs4 or 3vs4. I do t know how many players were online at a time but probably few. Still, you could play full games with the community. I’m not too sad it shit down, but I did play it time to time. It is also compatable on a pstv device with a DualShock 3, so some players didn’t even play it on their vita

[gravedigger]

You were lucky i guess. :D

[SonyStyled]

@gravedigger maybe a little. My friend brought over his psp with a new battery and got it running again. I said “hey look at this” and gave him my vita and played a little uncharted and Killzone. I played a few mp games for the sake of it

[TheHan]

Wow and this is what people support? Quietly shutting down your games. That’s definitely a bad move. Just like with what they’ve done with the Big show huh.

[rainslacker]

Hmmm...shutting down a games MP after 8 years, or not getting any games for 5 years. Lesser of two evils I guess.

[Voodoopower73]

Vita died along time ago. It's a shame. Hopefully they learnt lessons from it. Thing is, if Sony Made a Portable now Mark Cerny would design it and it would be quality.

[Atomicjuicer]

Cerny designed vita

[Voodoopower73]

Cerny wasn't even there,lol.

Takashi Sogabe Designed the vita and I actually really liked it. But the memory restraint and cost caused it issues and they spent too much money on the underneath touch pad and oled screen. Had it been more cost effective it would have done better.

[fortnitehack]

Great ! This is really an informative article.

[Malice-Flare]

well, since this game didn't require PS+, not a big loss. but, they should have made a notification at least...

[Rangerman1208]

Now I'm worried that Soul Sacrifice and Freedom Wars are next. I get that not everything is going to last but atleast announce the servers shutdown, instead of doing it quietly.

[beanplant]

That's a shame had good memories playing that game online

[SLiSH83]

Typical Sony thing
Another Anti-consumer move that the sheep move the goal post on.

[ParanoidFreak]

Sony's pulled a ton of sh!t like this in the past but because there was no warning with this one, they've lost my PS5 purchase. Wasn't hyped for PS5 anyway but this seals it. Hope they get the backlash they deserve