The Switch version of Aliens: Fireteam Elite has been permanently shut down, leaving it unplayable for those who bought it.
Cold Iron Studios’ action game was originally released on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One and PC in August 2021, before getting a Switch port in April 2023.
Because the Switch hardware wasn’t deemed powerful enough to run the game natively, however, it was instead released as a cloud version, costing $29.99 for the standard edition and $59.99 for an Ultimate Edition which included the base game and DLC.
Earlier this year, the game was delisted from the eShop, with players receiving a message saying the game’s cloud servers were going to shut down on August 5.
This has now happened, meaning the entire game – which is still listed on other platforms’ digital stores and is fully playable offline should it ever be delisted – is no longer playable in any way on Switch because it was only available via cloud streaming.
Streaming continues to be a concern for preservationists
The game’s shutdown will be used as another example of the increasing impermanence of video games, especially as some predict a growth in cloud-based game streaming as an alternative to increasingly expensive hardware.
Xbox and PlayStation each offer cloud streaming as an option for subscribers of Game Pass and PlayStation Plus respectively, as an alternative to downloading games and playing them natively. Xbox has also started testing the option to stream games for free, with ads at the start of the session to cover costs.
Meanwhile, services such as Amazon Luna and Netflix have their own exclusive games which are only available to play through cloud streaming, meaning those games can theoretically be removed at any point and become ‘lost media’ that’s no longer preserved.
This was already seen when Netflix removed its selection of interactive specials, including Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch, which let viewers ‘play’ the story with branching choices. These are all now gone and no longer accessible.
Last week, during a Q&A following Take-Two‘s quarterly earnings call, CEO Strauss Zelnick said the rising cost of hardware was “not a good thing”, but suggested that widespread adoption of streaming was “around the corner” and would increase the potential size of the gaming audience.
“I think we’ll be in commercial streaming mode in three years, and by commercial I mean low latency,” Zelnick said. “That can 10x the effective install base.”
