EA “nicely” asks fans keeping old Battlefield games online to cease and desist

The Revive Network is a group of dedicated Battlefield fans who have filled the void since Gamespy's shutdown in 2014. Over the last three years, the team has managed to keep Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and Battlefield Heroes alive through the distribution of modified game clients. Well, no more as EA recently contacted Revive politely requesting that they shut down their work on these games.

In a statement on their website, The Revive Team said, "Electronic Arts Inc.' legal team has contacted us and nicely asked us to stop distributing and using their intellectual property. As diehard fans of the franchise, we will respect these stipulations."

EA's stance on the matter wasn't the fact that the Revive Network had created servers to keep the games alive, but that doing so required giving out modified versions of the game clients. In their letter they said:

"We need a favor though: we must ask that you stop throwing down Ammo Crates. In other, more legal-styled terms, please stop distributing copies of our game clients and using our trademarks, logos, and artwork on your sites. Thing is, your websites may easily mislead visitors to believe that you are associated or affiliated with EA – we're the only ones that get to wear the "Official EA" dog tag. Since you're Battlefield community members, we know that you are smart and helpful, and will respect that we must protect our intellectual property rights in the franchise."

In their letter, the Revive Network that says while their time on Battlefield has come to an end, the team has moved on to playing Minecraft, and that anyone is welcome to join. What's interesting is that following Gamespy's shutdown, EA had said that they would work on "transitioning" the games so that they would still be able to be played online. Clearly, that did not happen hence the need for the Revive Network.

Bringing the games back online in some form would be a nice consolation for those who lost out on the fruits of the Revive Network's work, though it's more likely these games stay locked to the past.

[Revive Network via Kotaku]