Battleborn's Servers are Shutting Down in 2021

Battleborn has been dead for a long time now – you might recall (although I’d be kind of shocked if you did) that two years ago, Gearbox officially stopped updating the game, which for an online multiplayer game is effectively the same as giving up on it entirely. Its already abysmally low player count dropped even farther, and both Gearbox and publisher 2K were content to just let it exist in a barely-appreciated purgatory.

Well, even stuck in purgatory and without new updates, servers cost money. So 2K just announced that in January of 2021, they’ll officially be closing the servers and rendering the game completely unplayable.

Here’s the official timeline, as posted on 2K’s support page.

• After February 24, 2020, you will no longer be able to purchase premium virtual currency (“Platinum”) for use in the game.
• The game’s servers will remain active and the game will continue to be playable until January 2021.
• Once servers are deactivated, Battleborn will no longer be playable.

This will impact a small number of people (you can’t even download Battleborn anymore) but it is worth noting that last bit: once the servers are down, Battleborn will no longer be playable in any shape or form. 2K made a special point to underline that later in the post and say that not even single-player or peer-to-peer games will be available. So if you were hoping you could still be that one guy who plays Battleborn by yourself until the day you die, think again.

This, of course, speaks to the frequently-cited problems of these live-service games in that 2K has decided that people who fairly bought the game with their own money can’t even play it by themselves once the servers are taken down. You never really owned it, you were just paying for the right to play it.

Which sucks.