The video game the US Army made for recruitment is shutting down

rockpapershotgun.com:

In 1999, the US Army reasoned that if children enjoyed shooting people in video games, perhaps they could be encouraged to later shoot people in real life too. Thus began America's Army, a series of tactical first-person shooters funded and released for free by the Army as a recruitment tool. But the series has seemingly petered out and now they're preparing to end support for the latest, America's Army: Proving Grounds. Official servers will shut down in May, though offline bits and privately owned servers will remain playable.

In a forum post titled "America's Army: Proving Grounds: Mission Success, Time to Withdraw" (presumably without irony) the developers announced that support will end and official servers will shut down on the 5th of May, 2022.

"Privately owned servers, the Mission Editor, and offline features are expected to function, but player stats will no longer be available. Official servers will be shut down," they explain. "User login, player stats, and other resources on the America's Army website will no longer be available."

That's for the PC version on Steam. The PlayStation version will be removed from the store and no longer available for download, though offline stuff should still work.

This might be the end for America's Army? In 2018, a member of the dev team commented that they had started work on a new game, but we've not heard much since and they've announced no replacement. The Army previously chained releases. Along with the main series which debuted on PC in 2002, they released heaps of spin-offs, including console games made with Ubisoft. I wonder if the Army are done with making their own games to recruit, now they're happily using other people's games.

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