I really love how Velan Studios handled the shutting down of their game Knockout City.
1) They announced the official servers would be shut down months ahead of time with an exact date[0].
2) In that same announcement they also announced that they would be releasing a private server/client build before the shut down happened that would allow people to continue to play using privately hosted servers.
They delivered on the promise to release a private server build[1] and by the time the official servers were shut down, the community had already built out a hosted server solution complete with a custom launcher to support easily connecting to different servers.
Because Velan took the time to plan the games shut down properly and went the extra mile to produce one last release that included everything needed to run the backend, players were able to continue playing the game completely whenever they want.
I really hope that other game studios take similar paths in the future.
1) They announced the official servers would be shut down months ahead of time with an exact date[0].
2) In that same announcement they also announced that they would be releasing a private server/client build before the shut down happened that would allow people to continue to play using privately hosted servers.
They delivered on the promise to release a private server build[1] and by the time the official servers were shut down, the community had already built out a hosted server solution complete with a custom launcher to support easily connecting to different servers.
Because Velan took the time to plan the games shut down properly and went the extra mile to produce one last release that included everything needed to run the backend, players were able to continue playing the game completely whenever they want.
I really hope that other game studios take similar paths in the future.
Note: On mobile, apologies for any grammar
[0] - https://www.knockoutcity.com/updates/knockout-city-special-a... [1] - https://www.knockoutcity.com/updates/knockout-city-private-h...