Early PS5 Exclusive Gets Delisted and Taken Offline

Five years after its exclusive PlayStation 5 release, Sony’s Destruction AllStars is coming to an unfortunate end.

destruction allstars is shutting down

Originally destined to be a PlayStation 5 launch title in 2020 next to games like Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Bluepoint’s Demon’s Souls remake, and Astro’s Playroom, Destruction AllStars was instead delayed to early 2021. The colorful and zany multiplayer vehicular combat game received mixed to poor reviews upon its eventual release and was vastly overshadowed by PlayStation’s other 2021 exclusives, like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Housemarque’s breakout hit Returnal, and Bethesda’s Deathloop, which was exclusive to PlayStation 5 at the time.

It’s safe to say that, despite having been released straight into Sony’s subscription service PlayStation Plus on day one, Destruction AllStars was quickly forgotten about by many. In 2024, players began reporting trouble connecting to the game’s servers, an issue that was never addressed or resolved by PlayStation or developer Lucid Games.

Arcade mode will remain playable

As discovered by Radec on X, PlayStation has no plans of ever fixing Destruction AllStars’ server issues and has instead opted to delist the game entirely from its digital storefront, officially shutting down online support for the early PS5 exclusive. PlayStation users who own the game will still be able to boot it up, but the title’s in-game currency, Destruction Points, which is mainly used to buy cosmetic items, will no longer be purchasable.

There is a shred of good news for fans of the game in that Destruction AllStars‘ single player modes will remain playable for the time being, until November 25. After this point, only Arcade Mode challenges will remain accessible seemingly indefinitely. As for the aforementioned in-game currency, players have until November 25 to splurge whatever Destruction Points they still have in their accounts.

It’s never a good thing to see an online game get shut down, though many PlayStation fans might be surprised to know the game has remained available up until now. As one of the PS5’s first exclusive titles, it was also one of the console’s first forays into the realm of live service, an experiment by Sony that had only intensified in the years following and is now slowly coming to an end following the disappointments of Concord and the cancelled Last of Us multiplayer project.

As for Lucid Games, it was swallowed up by Tencent in 2023, which might explain why Destruction AllStars‘ server issues were never resolved. It also became somewhat of a support studio on Rare’s ongoing Sea of Thieves and helped port it to PlayStation in 2024. Whether Lucid will get another opportunity to make a new game of its own following the shutdown of Destruction AllStars will remain to be seen.

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