Precarious times we’re living in… The ongoing outbreak has certainly led to a lot of changes in our lifestyles, some for the better, others for the worse.
This was unfortunately a week of shutdown announcements and the way things are going right now we should expect more to come, if Archive Team’s list of affected companies is anything to go by: https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Coronavirus/Affected_companies
We have come to the decision to shut down Star Wars™: Commander on June 12, 2020. As of March 13, 2020, all in-game purchases have been suspended. Star Wars: Commander will remain playable until 11am GMT on June 12, 2020. We will not be providing refunds, however any remaining credits will of course be available to use until June 12. We are also soon announcing in-game changes to make the rest of the time with the game extra special for our players.
Starting things off, it was announced that MapleStory 2 was to be discontinued this May. The MMO which was meant as a redesigned sequel to the original MappleStory is expected to be survived by its predecessor which is, at least for the time being, still up and running.
Another game that will be shutting down soon is Disney’s Star Wars: Commander Team in June, which has already had its downloads removed. You can read more about the Game Closure Announcement here.
Lastly we have Microsoft’s TechNet Gallery. TechNet itself was an IT portal with forums, tutorials and various features for IT-related discussion launched all the way back in 1998. Microsoft has been trying to migrate portions of the site for some time now, but it appears that they’ve decided it’s best to abandon certain features.
TechNet’s Gallery was a community for sharing and showcasing software projects, akin to GitHub today. A week or two ago it was announced that it would be retired for good and that developers should, if they so choose to, migrate their projects on their own.
You can read more about it here: https://aka.ms/technetgallery
Stay tuned for next week’s summary, where we’ll hopefully see each other again same time next week at EST 9 AM!
