Destruction AllStars has been scrubbed from the PlayStation Store and its multiplayer servers shut down with almost no warning, leaving it a single-player game only.
When an online video game reaches the end of its lifespan the developers will usually give players some time to jump into the multiplayer servers for one final hurrah before they’re shut down.
Some games, like Destiny 2, will even drop a final update and/or let people still buy it, so they can access any offline content, especially if the game is scheduled to be delisted from storefronts.
So, PlayStation 5 owners have been taken aback upon learning that Destruction AllStars, one of the console’s very first exclusives, has not only already been shut down but also scrubbed from the PlayStation Store.
The news spread online only recently, as Sony issued no public statement on the matter, only alerting anyone who already owned the game that the online servers are dead.
‘From May 26, 2026 at 14:00 UTC, Destruction AllStars and all associated virtual currency (Destruction Points) will be removed from sale at PlayStation Store and will no longer be available for purchase,’ reads an email sent out by Sony.
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All the game’s single-player modes will remain available but only until November 25, which is also how long you have to spend any remaining Destruction Points you have.
Confusingly, Sony adds that arcade mode single-player challenges will still be playable after this date, ‘however functionality and player experience may be impacted due to the server shutdown.’
If that is the case, and with most of the game inaccessible anyway, it’s strange that Sony isn’t just killing Destruction AllStars outright and instead will let it linger on like a zombie, with just one mode.
Sony says that its reasoning for shutting down all multiplayer functionality is because of ‘ongoing technical issues,’ but it’s more likely that it’s because not enough people are playing the game to justify paying to keep the servers online.
While there’s no way of confirming exact player numbers, Destruction AllStars is believed to have struggled to maintain a consistent player-base. After its February 2021 launch, it stopped receiving updates in late 2022 and the official X account has seen no activity since.
It’s a shame since the core premise was quite fun, but it was very shallow and didn’t offer enough meaningful content from the get-go. Plus, it was riddled with grubby microtransactions.
Sony did wisely include it with PlayStaiton Plus subscriptions, to get people on board, and even slashed its initial launch price from an obscene £70 to a more enticing £17.99, but that clearly wasn’t enough.
Destruction AllStars was essentially Sony’s first crack at a live service game for the PlayStation 5; a trend it’s continued to chase with minimal success, as evidenced by Concord and other cancelled projects.
The good news is that developer Lucid Games isn’t being shut down, although there’s no sign of it heading a new project any time soon. As a reminder, the studio isn’t one of Sony’s first party developers and all it’s done since Destruction AllStars is serve as a support studio on other games, including Sea Of Thieves and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
In 2023, Lucid Games was bought out by Chinese developer LightSpeed Studios (itself a subsidiary of Tencent) and is currently supporting its newfound American division, Lightspeed LA, on a new cyberpunk open world game called Last Sentinel.
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