Most gamers these days think that the success of a game is measured only by how many players purchase the game upon release. Some games have modest sales numbers but develop communities that remain active long after their initial release. Game developers maintain servers for some games for well over a decade.
EA has, however, recently announced that it will be shutting down the servers for some fan-favorite games that have persisted for a long time thanks to their dedicated communities. Most of these games are over a decade old and only have a small community of gamers still using the servers.
The shutdown will be gradual and have some impact on its player base. First, multiplayer servers will be shut down which means that these games can only be played in single-player or in ad-hoc LAN servers, if the game supports them.
Second, any achievements that require online multiplayer will no longer be accessible. Players can still get achievements for single-player objectives.
Here is a list of games that will have their servers taken offline permanently.