While Apex Legends is certainly the main focus of Respawn Entertainment's development efforts currently, the battle royale wouldn't exist without Respawn's debut franchise. All of the unique movement mechanics, smooth gunplay, and other aspects that have made Apex Legends popular were largely built from the foundation laid by Titanfall. Serving as the first game from the at-the-time new studio, Titanfall's dichotomous design between Titans and Pilots was entirely unique at the time, crafting an immensely popular gameplay loop. Mastering movement, equipment, and weapons was essential, and it helped pave the way for Apex Legends' eventual popularity.
Which is exactly why it's a shame that the original game is being de-listed from storefronts this week, despite the game's legacy for Respawn, and first-person shooters as a whole. However, given the controversial situation that's been surrounding the game's multiplayer for years now, it seems Respawn Entertainment had no other alternative to handle Titanfall's enduring issues. After seven years, the latter of which proving to be extremely problematic for fans of the original game, has led to the slow death of Titanfall's multiplayer entirely. It's an unfortunate and unintended fate for the first game in the series that was one of the most important FPS games of all time.
The Persistent Hacking Issues With Titanfall
As sad as it may be for the dedicated fans of Titanfall, the truth is that the first Titanfall game has been plagued with a hacking endemic over the last few years. As the frequency of attacks increased, Titanfall players had to deal with crashing servers, severe ping, and even rumors of hacks that could damage players' consoles/PCs. Some attacks even brought up privacy concerns that hackers could potentially lift personal information from Origin accounts, though Respawn Entertainment proved there was no breach of privacy after an investigation. However beyond that, Respawn Entertainment had very few developers working support on Titanfall, so the widespread hacking issue persisted.
To make matters worse, there was an entirely separate hacking controversy dedicated to an insane scheme among certain members of the Titanfall community. As it turns out, while other DDOS/ransomeware attacks didn't have a particularly clear motive, but a minority group of the Titanfall community decided to take things a step further. A subsect of fans organized the hack on Apex Legends from July of this year, shining a light on savetitanfall.com, a self-explanatory and malicious initiative by fans.
Two members of the community who organized the Apex Legends protest were actually doing so as part of a plot to ultimately break the servers for Titanfall/Titanfall 2. The perpetrators were attempting to get an in with Respawn Entertainment itself by presenting a possible "solution" to the rampant hacking in Titanfall, all to potentially gain access to Titanfall/Titanfall 2's source code. Eventually, these two were ousted by the Titanfall community, but the hacking issues still persisted in-game.
Titanfall Deserves a Better Fate Than Unceremonious De-Listing
Putting aside the controversy, hacking and crashing servers remained a constant threat to the Titanfall community, even in 2021. Evidently Respawn Entertainment had reached an ultimatum, and the developer made the decision to de-list the original Titanfall, rather than address the server issues head on. Multiplayer servers will still remain active for Titanfall (and Titanfall 2), despite the original game no longer being available for purchase, but any issues with servers will remain unaddressed. Granted, the concurrent players for the original Titanfall are likely nowhere near Titanfall 2 now, nor anything close to the player count Titanfall had seven years ago.
Respawn Entertainment's announcement of the de-listing was paired with a declarative statement from the developer, reassuring fans that "Titanfall is core to Respawn's DNA." Many fans on Reddit and social media emphasized that this statement rubbed them the wrong way, with many stating that the developer's encouraging words rang hollow. It'd be one thing if there was a new Titanfall game confirmed on the way, or if the studio was taking more preemptive action to prevent Titanfall 2 from suffering from the same fate, but that's not the case. Apex Legends is clearly the live service focus for Respawn currently, meaning Titanfall 2 could be susceptible to the same issues.
It's impossible to guarantee that Titanfall 2 wouldn't suffer from a similar fate in due time, even if the server and hacking issues are not nearly as bad as the first Titanfall. Regardless of whether or not the server security protocols in place are any different from Titanfall, hackers are persistent. Who's to say they won't move on to Titanfall 2 if the first Titanfall is de-listed, and subsequently the multiplayer servers are shut down? Fans are understandably disappointed, especially for such a formative series for the studio. The first Titanfall game deserves a greater fate than ending on such a negative note, especially when it seems like Respawn didn't address the problem at all.
Titanfall has been de-listed from digital storefronts as of December 1, 2021.