Respawn pulls the original Titanfall from stores

The original Titanfall is now discontinued, Respawn Entertainment announced in a Wednesday afternoon Tweet.

The game is no longer available on digital marketplaces and will disappear from subscription services in March of next year. (Titanfall and its DLC still appear in EA’s Origins shop, but the page errors out if you try to click on it). However, players who already own Titanfall have nothing to fear: the servers are still live, and Respawn didn’t reveal when or if they’ll eventually shut down.

As for what the future of the Titanfall franchise looks like, Respawn stated that Titanfall is “core to Respawn’s DNA and this incredible universe will continue. Today in Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends, and in the future.” That last part, “in the future,” is the interesting part. Respawn hasn’t announced Titanfall 3 or any other Titanfall projects, but this news suggests that the developer may have loose plans to build something Titanfall-related in the future. (We reached out to Respawn asking why the developer decided to delist Titanfall, but the studio just pointed us back to its official statement from today.)

There are a few potential reasons why Respawn may have removed the game. The simplest reason is that Titanfall is the oldest game in the company’s catalog, and naturally studios need to stop supporting games as they age. But with Titanfall’s history of hackers over the past few years, the game’s removal likely has something to do with the bevy of DDOS attacks that players have seen. With Titanfall suffering, another group of players disrupted Apex Legends servers with hacks over the summer in protest. By delisting Titanfall from stores, it’ll be less accessible and less likely to see major attacks, which in turn makes it less likely to frustrate players.