Less than two years after its launch, WWE 2K23 has been chokeslammed into oblivion: The sport’s servers have been closed, which means all on-line performance, together with on-line matches and Community Creations, will now not work.
2K Games telegraphed the transfer again in September 2024, saying that WWE 2K23 “is getting its closing takedown” on January 26. Sales of the sport and its digital foreign money had been halted on November 1, 2024. The lone brilliant spot is that offline modes will stay playable for anybody who owns the sport.
Player counts for WW3 2K23 on PC have been hovering the low-hundreds since mid-2024, so this is not a takedown that is going to influence a large swath of players. But it is notable nonetheless for the way shortly it occurred: Less than two years from launch to delisting and shutdown is, within the phrases of PC Gamer senior editor (and professional rasslin’ fan) Rich Stanton, “gobsmacking,” and I’d say he is not unsuitable: If I purchased this sport a yr in the past, I could be slightly livid proper about now.
It’s not unprecedented, although. WWE 2K22, the earlier iteration of the sport, had its servers closed on January 3, 2024, additionally lower than two years after its launch on March 11, 2022. Shortly after that sport’s launch, 2K Games quietly pulled the plug on practically all of the previous WWE 2K video games in a single fell swoop—it actually would not appear curious about retaining older video games within the sequence round as soon as a brand new model is out.
Delisting video games and ending server help has turn out to be a hot-button problem for players over the previous yr. The observe itself is nothing new, however Ubisoft lit a fuse in 2024 when it pulled the plug on The Crew, rendering the sport fully unplayable, even for individuals who’d bought it. That ill-advised transfer finally sparked the creation of Stop Killing Games, a company calling on the governments of France and different nations to look at the legality of such server shutdowns, and hopefully do one thing about it. A European Citizens Initiative petition to that finish has to this point attracted greater than 403,000 sigantures.
The WWE 2K23 shutdown and delisting is not fairly that egregious, however it’s a reminder that sport possession as we have come to know it’s an ephemeral factor—one thing Steam itself started acknowledging in October 2024 with a brand new disclaimer reminding those who “a purchase order of a digital product grants a license for the product,” which merely put means you pay for it, however you do not actually personal it in any respect.
2K Games hasn’t introduced WWE 2K25 but, however we could also be listening to one thing about it quickly: WWE 2K23 and 2K24 had been every formally introduced in January of their respective years, and launched the next March. Assuming that sample holds, we will additionally anticipate to see WWE 2K24 get a tombstone piledriver into offline-only play shortly thereafter.
