The 2014 PS4 racing title, DriveClub, will be disappearing from the Playstation Store in six months and its servers will shut down for good another six months after that. As of August 31st 2019: DriveClub and it’s associated spin offs including DriveClub VR and DriveClub Bikes along with all season passes and DLC will be removed from the store. A year from tomorrow, on March 31st 2020, the online servers for the game will suffer the same fate. If you own DriveClub after this point you will still be able to access the single player modes; however, leader boards and multiplayer will no longer be accessible.
Sony, in a post announcing the shutdown, provided no explanation as to why they were taking this action. The most likely answer is that the licensing that Sony acquired to use car brands in the video game has ran out and instead of paying to use the licences again Sony has simply decided to shutdown the game. Other racing games have suffered the same fate in recent years such as Microsoft’s Forza Horizon 2 which disappeared from the Xbox Live Marketplace last September.
It is also possible that Sony was no longer willing to pay for the upkeep of the multiplayer servers. DriveClub was never well received critically. As of right now the game sits on a 71-critic score on the review aggregator site, Metacritic. Sony and Evolution, the developers of the game who have since been shut down, apologised for the quality of the title when it was launched in 2014 and eventually they offered free DLC as compensation for the quality of the game.
Games disappearing from online marketplaces also raises important questions about the future of gaming. Google’s recently announced Staadia streaming service relies entirely on online services for distribution. What would happen if Google removed access to video games you had purchased in the past for whatever reason they see fit? There were also rumours that Microsoft have been working on a digital only Xbox One, something they tried and failed to do in 2013. As Emma Boyle, writing for Tech Radar points out, there are considerable dangers of an online only marketplace are always something to consider.
