PS Vita Killzone: Mercenary Servers Suddenly Went Dark

It's no secret that Sony has officially pulled the plug on its last gaming handheld but that was really only as far as production of the PlayStation Vita and its cartridges go. One would expect the console to continue working with existing games though some Vita-related servers to eventually fold. Unfortunately for players of Killzone: Mercenary, that happened without warning even when those official servers were actually run by Sony itself.

Killzone: Mercenary is, or was rather, one of the Vita's most popular titles, perfectly exemplifying the console's "gaming on the go" philosophy when it came to offering piecemeal missions. Its popularity was also driven by the fact that is has been the Vita's only online multiplayer shooter since 2013.

Players probably expected that the feature will eventually go away, too. After all, Sony runs those servers and it has officially stopped supporting the Vita. They will still be free to play single-player missions over and over again but many perhaps hoped the end wouldn't be so abrupt.

That's exactly the beef that Killzone players have with Sony. At first, it seemed that the matchmaking part of the multiplayer experience was experiencing an outage but as minutes grew into hours and hours into a full day without any word from the company, players presumed the worst. Sony shut down the server without giving anyone even a day's warning.

Again, it's to be expected that Killzone's multiplayer mode wouldn't last forever but Sony has been known to give fair warning for servers it did plan on shutting down. And while the PS Vita is far from Sony's mind nowadays, it could have at least given one of its most passionate and loyal communities a proper send-off.