America’s Army, the controversial US Army-developed multiplayer game, is shutting down after 20 years. Its latest iteration, America’s Army: Proving Grounds, will go offline later this year, and no further titles in the series have been announced. The game will continue to function on private servers for PC, but online will be entirely unavailable for those on PlayStation.
When is America’s Army: Proving Grounds shutting down?
The America’s Army: Proving Grounds servers will shut down on May 5, 2022. After that date, the game will receive no official support. The Army will discontinue all services for it on PSN, and only the limited single-player features will be accessible.
The official blog post announcing the game’s shutdown ended with:
Thank you to everyone who played AA:PG, and thank you to those who still enjoy it. While support and servers are still active, we encourage you to dive into matches with your battle buddies and continue the mission.
More details will be shared as information becomes available, so please stay tuned.
However, it seems unlikely that the series will continue. When version 1.0 was released less than a year after the 9/11 attacks, the military enjoyed considerable public support. Since then, the War on Terror has become a PR disaster only slightly less damaging to the government’s image than the Vietnam War. As such, interest in America’s Army declined, and it’s been continually criticized as a recruiting tool.
In its defense, America’s Army did innovate in several ways. It was one of the first quality free-to-player shooters, which helped it garner a large audience early on. It was also one of the first games to appeal to the milsim crowd.
As far as we know, the source code for America’s Army is still unavailable. However, since it was developed using public funding, we’ll likely see that information published sometime after the game goes offline. That should allow its remaining fanbase to continue supporting it, at least on PC.
In other news, the GTA Trilogy Remaster sold well despite its massive issues, and The Wolf Among Us 2 might finally be coming out.
