Sony's online first-party shooters MAG, SOCOM 4, and SOCOM Confrontation will cease to be playable online from January 28th, 2014, as it confirmed on the Official PlayStation Twitter Page.
What reason does the company have? For one, MAG is a massive video game which allows up to 256 players in a match, so the money to keep those beasts running can't be cheap. SOCOM was once a pioneer of online play for Sony consoles, but it simply can't keep up with Call of Duty or Battlefield anymore being locked to a single system.
My biggest guess on the matter though is that Sony is just totally ready to move on to the PlayStation 4 and get a fresh reboot without the baggage of dated servers weighing it down.
The original SOCOM and MAG developer, Zipper Interactive, closed back in 2012, so I suppose there is no real hope in regaining the series. The team turned to Kickstarter to create a spiritual successor to the series called H:Hour.
SOCOM Confrontation developer Slant Six went independent, and recently created Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.
Of the three canceled games, Only SOCOM 4 has an offline element to it. MAG and SOCOM Confrontation are now both doomed to be lost to history and can never be played again once the servers go down. The tragic side effect of online only gaming is that nothing lasts forever, and you can never again enjoy those nostalgic games you picked up and played when you were younger.
Kind of a shame, too. Now that I think about, excluding the early days of 56K Command and Conquer, SOCOM: US Navy Seals was my first jump into online gaming back on the PlayStation 2. I sunk tons of hours into getting blown away on every single map, but I still enjoyed myself a lot.
Welcome to a world where nothing is yours and nothing is sacred. Don't get too attached because it's only a matter of time before it's yanked from your hands. I think I'll hold on to my physical media for a while, thanks. I might still have that old SOCOM: US Navy Seals disc somewhere in my closet. Maybe I'll fire it up to celebrate the fact that I still can.
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