Electronic Arts may be putting the brakes on one of its oldest franchises. According to recent comments from Matthew Everingham, a photographer formerly associated with the car culture site Speedhunters, the Need for Speed series has been “shelved” and is being “quietly parked” by EA for the foreseeable future. While not an official confirmation, the remarks add to a pattern of decisions that suggest the racing franchise may be on indefinite hold.
Speedhunters, a car culture site originally funded by EA to support the visual and lifestyle aspects of Need for Speed, has also gone dark—its last update was back in April 2025. If EA is indeed pulling the plug on both the site and the game series, it would mark a significant pause for a franchise that once stood among the publisher’s marquee titles.
There’s been no formal statement from EA regarding the future of Need for Speed, but the signals are hard to ignore. Earlier this month, the company announced that online servers for Need for Speed Rivals, a title released in 2013, will shut down on October 7. That followed a broader internal restructuring in which Criterion Games—the studio responsible for Need for Speed—had much of its staff reassigned to the Battlefield franchise. By 2023, only a small team remained on racing projects, and even they appear to have now been absorbed into the Battlefield development effort, according to comments from Battlefield lead Vince Zampella earlier this year.
First launched in 1994, The Need for Speed helped define the modern arcade racing genre. Over the decades, the franchise released more than 20 titles across multiple platforms, evolving in style but often returning to its core formula of high-speed street racing and car customization. The most recent entry, Need for Speed Unbound, released in December 2022, was met with mixed reception. As of mid-2025, the game holds a “Mixed” user rating on Steam, with over 40,000 reviews.
If EA is indeed shelving the franchise, it’s doing so without the kind of sendoff or closure fans might expect. But in the context of broader industry consolidation and EA’s shifting focus toward live-service models and shooter franchises, the quiet sidelining of Need for Speed fits a familiar pattern. Whether this is a temporary pit stop or the end of the road remains to be seen, but for now, the engine appears to be off.
