The PlayStation 5 exclusive Firewall Ultra is shutting down on September 17. The announcement that Firewall Ultra would be shut down was made rather quietly and without any fanfare, so PS5 gamers who are still playing the game could be taken by surprise.
Firewall Ultra was originally released back in 2023, a few months after the launch of PS VR 2. The game is a sequel to Firewall: Zero Hour, with both titles developed by First Contact Entertainment. Although the game is approaching its third anniversary, First Contact Entertainment shut down at the end of 2023, which may have been early writing on the wall for its last game.
It’s Officially the End of an Era for PlayStation
Recent developments paint a very clear picture that the most recent era of PlayStation, moments that have defined the PS5, is over.
PlayStation 5 Exclusive Will Shut Down Forever
Multiplayer shooter and PS5-exclusive Firewall Ultra will go offline on September 17, 2026 at 10 am PDT. Sony has stated that since the game is only available online, it will become unplayable past this date. The shutdown will land just shy of a month after the game’s third anniversary. Firewall Ultra was one of the two Sony Interactive-published exclusive PlayStation VR2 games, with the other being Horizon Call of the Mountain. The majority of virtual reality games available on the device have been third-party, which makes this shutdown particularly unfortunate for Sony and PlayStation fans.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Easy (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)
Oddly enough, the news was delivered by Sony in a very roundabout and quiet way. Rather than making a new official post on a social media account or otherwise providing a clear announcement regarding the game’s shutdown, the only indication given came via an old post on the official PlayStation Blog. In a story that was originally published on April 22, 2023, which covered Firewall Ultra‘s launch that same week, Sony added an addendum noting that the online features for the game and its ability to be played at all would cease in September. Despite the fact that Sony itself published the game, its discontinuation has been announced with very little fanfare.
Sadly, Firewall Ultra could never quite rise to the heights of its predecessor, Firewall: Zero Hour. Released in 2018 for the PlayStation VR, Firewall: Zero Hour put together four-player squads, with 12 playable characters, customizable weapon loadouts, and an additional PVP mode called Contracts. The game was fairly well-received, with a 78/100 average score from critics on OpenCritic. Though the title didn’t win any, it was also nominated for a number of awards, including at the Golden Joystick Awards and The Game Awards in 2018.
Comparatively, Firewall Ultra only reached a critic average of 65/100 on OpenCritic. Reviewers cited issues like awkward controls that didn’t feel like they had been built with VR in mind, and took issue with a perceived lack of content available in the game. It’s possible the latter might have been amended in time, but since the developer shut down shortly after, the game has remained stagnant. Firewall Ultra has now been delisted on the PlayStation store entirely. Sadly, this makes it one of the latest games that will essentially become lost media once it goes offline.
Even outside its developer shutting down, some gamers may have seen this one coming, as the PS VR2 has struggled since its release. Within a year of its launch, Sony paused the production of PS VR2 headsets, and on the development side, it significantly scaled down development in its VR Initiative. Virtual reality still isn’t a mainstream form of gaming, with far fewer games developed with VR in mind than those meant to be played on a standard screen. The price of the PSVR 2 may not have helped matters, as it went onto the market with an MSRP of $549.99, whereas its predecessor, the PS VR, was $399 at launch. VR headsets by Meta may have also caused problems for the PS VR2, as the Meta Quest 3 came out later the same year, prior to the holiday shopping season, and the fully standalone device cost $50 less than Sony’s headset.
Source: Sony
