EA’s Drakspore might be the world’s first game to "die" of old age and illness.
While EA didn’t actually take the game offline, it seems that bugs and errors kept accumulating without being fixed until the game became unplayable and Valve decided to remove it from its online store, Steam.
Darkspore was released in April 2011 as an online game. By October of the same year, a large number of players reported not being able to login to the game for more than 9 days due to server-side errors in its DRM system. Since then, similar issues were reported and fixed occasionally until now.
"Darkspore is no longer developed. It is for almost all intents & purposes an abandoned title," Darkspore forum moderator Inquisitor Laine posted on the game’s forum. "Error 73003 has gone unfixed & remains an issue. Error Code 3 has arisen for the majority/all & remains an issue."
"If you cannot play the game & have flicked through technical issues for any fixes, then contact EA Customer Support; especially if it regards CD-Keys or refunds."
Valve has removed Darkspore from its online store, Steam. However, the game is still available for purchase through EA’s Origin service.