Ubisoft this week announced that XDefiant would be joining the recently axed Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. As of December 3, the free-to-play first-person shooter will no longer be available to download, and no new players will be allowed to create an account. On June 3, 2025, XDefiant's servers will officially be shut down, making the game unplayable for old and new players alike. Along with the announcement of the closure, the development team behind XDefiant will also see significant changes, with 277 developers being laid off as a result of the shut-down, according to Stephen Totilo on BlueSky.

The remaining development team will be kept on to manage the game throughout its sunsetting until June 2025. It's not really a surprise that XDefiant is shutting down, despite the game's executive producer vehemently denying the allegations of the same as recently as October this year. While the exact reason for the game's closure wasn't revealed, news broke about XDefiant's struggles soon after its March 2024 launch, and it appears that the staunch competition in the space and the difficulties of monetizing a free-to-play game, even one that tries to break the mold, was just too much for XDefiant and its developer team.

Humanoid Origin, a game studio started and lead by former Mass Effect creator, Casey Hudson, has just announced that it will be shutting down just 3 years after its creation. The main driving factor behind the closure of Humanoid Origin is a lack of funding, with the announcement coming from a LinkedIn post on Monday, November 25. In the announcement, Hudson places some of the blame on the "broader challenges in the industry" and says that the studio's main goal right now is to support its employees in the transition to new projects.

The fledgling game studio was unable to launch its first project, which was to be an ambitious, large-scale AAA sci-fi game for which it had aggressively been hiring creative talent since the company's 2021 start. This is just the latest studio casualty in what has been a brutal year for the gaming industry as a whole. Earlier this year, studios owned by much larger corporations with deeper pockets also saw similar closures, like the somewhat mysterious shuttering of the Humble Games publishing division, which was later clarified as "restructuring."

According to @momomo_us, Intel has discontinued its Cryo Cooling Technology as of July 1, 2023, marking the end of one of the tech industry's few sub-ambient cooling options. The technology, which could chill CPUs to 0 degrees Celsius to enhance performance, accompanied Intel's processors from the 10th-generation Comet Lake to the 13th-generation Raptor Lake. Despite its innovative approach to boosting CPU performance, the cooling solution was not widely embraced. The discontinuation comes just before the arrival of the 14th Generation Raptor Lake Refresh, which will not support the Cryo Cooling tech. Intel plans to maintain updates for the existing Cryo Cooling hardware until December 31, 2023.

This specialized cooling method did see some use in products like the Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360 Sub-Zero and the EKWB EK-QuantumX Delta TEC waterblocks. Interestingly, the technology has managed to work even with non-Intel CPUs, which famous overclocker der8auer managed to get up and running on AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X. Some modifications were in place, but it was possible to do so. The likely reason for shutting down the cryo cooling project is the need for more financial sense to continue to pursue this technology and the effort to keep the cost of R&D down and make funds available for other projects at Intel's laboratories.

As we close in on 15 years since the release of Battlefield 1943, and Bad Company 1 & 2, we are announcing that their journey is coming to an end. Starting April 28 2023, Battlefield 1943, and Battlefield: Bad Company 1 & 2 will be removed from digital storefronts and you will no longer be able to purchase them.

This is in preparation for the retirement of the online services for these titles which will happen on December 8 2023. For Bad Company 1 and 2, you can still continue playing them and use their respective offline features, such as the single player campaign. You can also read our FAQ and Service Updates for further information on the retirement of online services.

Update 14:17 UTC: EA updated their press release this morning, to clarify that the inclusion of Mirror's Edge was an error. They stated via Twitter: "We currently have no plans to remove Mirror's Edge from digital storefronts."