Online multiplayer changed the trajectory of games, but the cost of keeping servers running means every virtual world is doomed to die – sooner or later

Nevan Hagarty had an idea. If he and other Halo 3 players stayed online the night of 13 January 2022, they could delay the impending server shutdown. Players knew this was coming: it had happened to Halo 2 when its Xbox Live servers were turned off in 2010, and a group managed to stay logged into the multiplayer servers for weeks.

And so, players gathered online before the server shutdown to pay homage and to mourn the game they loved so dearly. And, maybe, to keep it online for a little longer. “I must have played ’til about 4am the night of the shutdown, trading stories with so many players about their love of the game and their experiences over the last 15 years,” says Hagarty, 22. “It was a really wholesome experience I won’t forget.”

An autobiographical game about the devastating effects of chronic illness on an artist’s creative life gives players the chance to slow the pace right down

Bub does not look like a traditional video game. Artist and stop-motion animator Case Jernigan spends hours, days, months in his studio drawing, painting and delicately cutting out pieces of collected paper, while coder and gameplay designer Todd Anderson builds scripts and physics simulations to make them into a game.

In Bub, you play through the life of an artist in New York City, making art but also diving into his early memories and imaginative dreams. “You go from present day New York City into his childhood, or different sort of visions, which are all rendered in stop motion,” says Anderson. “His story is told in the present day, but also how he’s making sense of his past.”

When a company decided to shut down an online game’s servers, there wasn’t much the players who had bought that title could do – until a group called Stop Killing Games began lobbying for new consumer protection laws

You can never be sure how long an online video game will last. Developer BioWare shut off sci-fi shooter Anthem’s servers in January, after seven years. Electronic Arts discontinued access to The Sims Mobile the same month. Wildlight Entertainment shuttered its Highguard servers in March, mere months after the game’s release. Activision Blizzard took Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile offline in April. Dozens more games have had their servers shut down in the first six months of 2026, adding to an already long list of video games that are no longer playable.

There is little that players can do when a company decides to stop supporting online play. Communities work hard to keep their favourite games online, sometimes keeping dead games running on private servers, though that may not necessarily be entirely legal. Generally, though, when a game goes offline it is dead and it’s not coming back.