The always-on Darkspore will shutdown and die on March 1st, 2016. This is the second time that news has spread that Darkspore is shutting down, only this time it’s going to be for good. The first time was back in 2013, but EA brushed off the news and announced that the game wasn’t actually being shutdown at the time.

However, this latest announcement seems to indicate that the shutdown will be final. Over on the official Darkspore forums there’s a notice indicating that Darkspore will no longer be in operation as of March 1st, 2016. The notice reads…

“1st December 2015: Today, we are announcing that we will be closing the doors on Darkspore, effective March 1st, 2016. It’s been a great run and we hope that you have enjoyed your time with Darkspore. While it can be hard to say goodbye, keep in mind there are tons of awesome games available for free on Origin.

 

“There is always something great to play on Origin and we hope to see you in another game very soon!”

It’s sad how they advertise other games on Origin while announcing that one of those games will no longer be available to play… at all.

The news about the closure actually came from YouTuber Accursed Farms. Ross from Accursed Farms spends half an hour talking about the good and bad about Darkspore, but also points out how the game will be gone for good since it’s an always-on title, meaning that once the servers are shutdown you can’t play the game anymore. Ross encourages gamers to get active and form a letter-writing campaign to inform Electronic Arts about the issue.

Ross’s Game Dungeon: Darkspore

Ross delves into the darkness that is Darkspore.

Ross instructs his more than 100,000 subscribers to partake in the letter writing campaign. The video has even managed to spread quite a bit throughout social media, including Reddit, as he inculcates gamers with the necessary know-how on how to make some changes by taking the fight directly (and politely) to EA. He even includes the business address for EA’s COO, Peter Moore, and other executives in the description of the video:

The message is made loud and clear: anti-gaming practices that see popular games tied to servers that can be shutdown are a plague and a disservice to the historical integrity of video games.

Just recently the EFF managed to lobby on behalf of gamers to have the Library of Congress allow modders and hackers to take certain steps to thwart DRM in order to preserve abandonware. They were successful.

Ross is now taking it a step further, hoping to stop the process where it begins: the corporate headquarters.

The message is pretty simple, insofar that he wants gamers to let EA know to stop killing off their games. A polite but strongly worded letter – and Ross is suggesting snail mail, hence the addresses listed above – in order to convince the executives that maybe a video game publisher shouldn’t be making it a habit to kill off the products that people actually enjoy playing (more or less so for some games).

Just recently EA had unleashed a reboot of Need For Speed on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The biggest takeaway from the title? Always-on DRM. Right now the game operates and right now you can get in your kicks, but when the time comes and the heart of revenue beats slower than one of Dick Cheney’s defunct pacemakers, you can bet any dollar or dime that EA will pull the plug faster than Nike pulled their endorsement deal with Manny Pacquiao when political incorrectness was the name of the game, as noted by ESPN.

But what if you live in another country but you still want to be proactive? Well, one thing that #GamerGate did was make use of a hashtag to get the word out and spread around the word of the media’s corruption, ranging from sex for favors to collusion, to blacklisting, to FTC violations. For this particular case they’re using the #StopKillingGames tag to get the word out. Feel free to inform other gamers about it if you think it’s an important issue affecting the history video games.