10 Video Games You Didn't Realise Shut Down In 2024

While there's arguably never been more quality video games releasing every single month, it's also fair to say that the gaming industry is in quite the perilous place right now.

With almost 15,000 games industry layoffs throughout 2024 and the ever-present pressure for publishers to deliver sustained growth for their investors, most companies in the business have been trying to figure out the safest, most profitable path forward.

But with the volatility of the industry at present, where developers often spend years chasing a trend that's since gone out of fashion, it's little surprise that many games, both big and small, end up closing up shop in short order.

And 2024 saw a number of video games shut down one way or another, from supposed Next Big Things which flopped in mind-boggling record time, to modest attempts to break into crowded genres that simply couldn't make a name for themselves.

Whether they lasted days or actually managed to survive for years before finally closing, these games have all since evaporated into the digital abyss, each contributing to the ongoing conversation about what games preservation means in an era of live service, online-only titles...

Ubisoft's racer The Crew first launched in December 2014, and in late 2023 the publisher delisted it from all storefronts while announcing that the game's servers would be shut down on March 31, 2024, effectively killing it outright given its online-only nature.

After The Crew's closure, Ubisoft additionally revoked licenses from players, preventing them from devising mods to make the game playable offline. This proved all the more infuriating as players had reported discovering unused code within the game for an offline mode.

As a result, sequels The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest were review-bombed on Steam, and two players even filed a class action lawsuit against Ubisoft, accusing them of misleading players into believing they permanently owned the game when they purchased it.

Elsewhere, some fans are attempting to revive the game by developing an offline mode and also migrating its files to private, player-hosted servers.

While the original Crew seemingly remains officially dead for good, the backlash did at least prompt Ubisoft to confirm last year that legit offline modes are on the way for The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest.