This further confirms that the PlayStation VR2 simply couldn’t deliver the sales that Sony had hoped for.
When developers and publishers announce that they’re shutting down a game’s online services or halting development of new content, they usually at least show players the courtesy of publishing a separate announcement, distinct from the rest of the official news surrounding that game, so that if someone discovers the title years after release, they can see the latest relevant information. Nobody would dare update a years-old post and effectively bury the news in it, right? Apparently nobody except Sony, as the slow death of the PlayStation VR2 continues.
Firewall Ultra, the PlayStation VR2 sequel to Firewall Zero Hour, which originally appeared on PlayStation VR, will officially shut down on September 17. Its servers will be switched off, and nobody who purchased the game will be able to play it anymore. Although this is not explicitly stated, it also appears that the game has already been removed from the PlayStation Store. Firewall Zero Hour, however, remains available.
This news was not made public in a brand-new PlayStation post. Instead, it appeared inside a PlayStation Blog entry dated August 22, 2023, which originally focused on the game’s post-launch plans. Now an update can be seen at the top of that page: “Online features for Firewall Ultra will be terminated on September 17, 2026, and will no longer be available after that date. As you must be online to play this title, the game will be unplayable starting at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 17, 2026.”
The developer behind both Firewall Zero Hour and Firewall Ultra, First Contact Entertainment, already shut its doors in 2024, so the fact that the game itself is now finished is not really surprising. What is surprising is the way it is being handled. Trying to smuggle this kind of update into an old blog post suggests Sony did not want to make much noise about it, but with the studio already gone and the PlayStation VR2 basically on life support, what exactly would have been the problem with announcing the news in a fresh post? Arguably, this caused more backlash because Sony failed the most basic requirement of a shutdown notice. One could also argue that it is disrespectful both to the former developers at First Contact and to the people who actually bought a PlayStation VR2 and Firewall Ultra.
By failing to support the new headset properly, Sony has already made it clear that it no longer cares much about the PlayStation VR2. After two unsuccessful attempts and disappointing sales from both efforts, a third-generation headset seems highly unlikely. But trying to quietly sweep away these pieces of its slow collapse is unfair, and the people who end up carrying that burden are the players who actually invested in Sony’s VR ambitions…
