The Best Way to End a 13-Year-Old Space War Game — Blast It With Meteors

Watch the ‘PlanetSide’ die in a meteor shower

by IAN BIRNBAUM

After more than a decade of battle, 2003’s science-fiction massively multiplayer shooter PlanetSide is no more. On July 1, PlanetSide’s servers went off-line, the guns fell silent, soldiers put down their weapons to have a dance party and apocalyptic meteors fell from the sky.

Steven Messner, who’s currently writing a feature on PlanetSide’s history, recorded the legendary shooter’s final moments.

PlanetSide joins a long list of beloved games brought low by “evolving business needs.” Sure, making money is important — businesses gotta business — but it’s still profoundly sad to watch classic games disappear when the public moves on to newer things.

What would the world be like if a movie studio concluded a film’s theatrical release by burning all the copies? Games, especially online games, need an equivalent of the Criterion Collection.

After 13 years of constant battle and many millions of lives lost, the conflict between three dead-locked factions ended in a draw and then blinked out of existence.

Space war. Huh. What is it good for?

This story originally appeared at Vice Motherboard.