End of Lifespan plans

[kepler68]

Spoiler: Original Post

I'm curious if FDev have made any plans for when the game reaches the end of it's life, when server shutdown day arrives.
I'm not sure what is serverside-exclusive, what is clientside, and what could realistically be edited to run solo, but this is a huge universe that is extremely important to a ton of people.
I'd love to be able to revisit all the old stars and planets in 30+ years, maybe even fly around with some old friends, like many of the older players can do with the original Elite.


EDIT:
I dont bring this up because i'm worried about the game's health. Trailblazers seems to have given it a shot of vitality! I bright it up from the recent activity with Stop Killing Games in the EU, and this is one of the major online-only games I'd really love to revisit in 20-30+ years

Moved original post to spoilers since my main question was answered. This thread is not fearmongering nor doomsaying, i'm optimistic about the future of the game! And it seems yes, the game will survive even when it stops making money one way or another.

So you reading this, yes you, have a fantastic day or else

 

[DemiserofD]

I'm curious if FDev have made any plans for when the game reaches the end of it's life, when server shutdown day arrives.
I'm not sure what is serverside-exclusive, what is clientside, and what could realistically be edited to run solo, but this is a huge universe that is extremely important to a ton of people.
I'd love to be able to revisit all the old stars and planets in 30+ years, maybe even fly around with some old friends, like many of the older players can do with the original Elite.

As long as it's still making money, why would they ever end it? The old Paradigm of games being sunsetted was built in a Time when graphical advances were almost exponential, where you could clearly tell the difference between a game made five years ago and a game made now.

That's not strictly true anymore. A game made now could easily look worse than the game made five years ago. More than that, Elite has a well-established player base, and that is an incredibly valuable asset.

Odyssey wasn't exactly a great showing, but I don't see any reason they couldn't do multiple additional paid DLCs over the next 10 or 20 years, if they wanted to.

 

[Muzz UK]

As this is a live service game it will continue until its not cost effective then it's either shut down or a new iteration arrives. I might be wrong don't quote me but I'm sure FD said in the 2010s they'd make the game files available for private hosting but I could be miss informed on this. This topic is a bit morbid. Elite is no where near dying so I wouldn't worry about it. The games doing quite well at the moment.

 

[Archvillain]

I think that at some level, this is David Braben's baby/legacy (or at least, one of many) and as long as he is around, he'll want it to go on. Ie if it stopped making money and it was time to shut down, he'd probably want it to continue via a community server rather than be lost entirely. How much of a say he would have in that these days I wouldn't know

 

[Cosmo]

I'm curious if FDev have made any plans for when the game reaches the end of it's life, when server shutdown day arrives.

No, the last 6 months ED has been doing a lot better with more player activity + ship and cosmetic sales. March 2025 had 13,254 peak concurrent players on Steam. This was previously surpassed in June 2021 with 15,554 concurrent players (1 month after Odyssey launched).

March 2025

6,895.2

+2,376.1

+52.58%

13,254

June 2021	7,523.8	-3,433.3	-31.33%	15,554
May 2021	10,957.1	+1,570.8	+16.73%	27,568

I'm not sure what is serverside-exclusive, what is clientside, and what could realistically be edited to run solo, but this is a huge universe that is extremely important to a ton of people.
I'd love to be able to revisit all the old stars and planets in 30+ years, maybe even fly around with some old friends, like many of the older players can do with the original Elite.

The classic MMORPG, Ultima Online launched on 24 September 1997. UO is still available and hosted by Electronic Arts. It receives occasional updates. So ED won't be going offline for a long time. Probably for as long as Frontier Developments exists they will keep it online. A sequel Elite V could replace ED if it builds upon all the features of ED. If there is an Elite V, I bet they will keep ED online as a "legacy game".

 

[Ian Doncaster]

In terms of Frontier's official statements we only really have the ones made in mid-2014, after they'd announced that the offline mode wasn't workable and were trying to reassure people who'd been playing FE2/FFE for twenty years that they could expect to do the same with Elite Dangerous.

- they will be taking regular backups of the game state as an archive
- they would hope [1] at end-of-life to release a static copy which people could use in some form (people have "remembered" this as releasing the server code or in some way open-sourcing it; these are both highly optimistic, a client patched to read galaxy data from a static file on disk and store data to a local singleplayer savegame would meet what was said and feels more likely as their intent)

Since then there's been nothing further said on the matter, presumably because the game has continued reliably bringing in new players and a steady (if niche) income sufficient to fund both operations and development and there's been no sign that shutting down the server-based version might be necessary in the foreseeable future.


[1] Frontier said a lot of things in 2013/2014 before really knowing how technically possible they might be. It might be that after multiple decades of server-based operation this might end up to be something they can't affordably do. Or it might be that they have developer-mode clients that already do this so that devs can test out changes without needing a full server infrastructure up and running, and it'd be a few week's work to make one of those releasable. There's no way for us to guess either way.

 

[amigacooke]

There's no way for us to guess either way.

The console version of ED might be an indicator of the route Frontier would take, a game that gets minimum support but continues to exist in a frozen development state.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The console version of ED might be an indicator of the route Frontier would take, a game that gets minimum support but continues to exist in a frozen development state.

Agreed - while we don't have any indication of what proportion of ED's ongoing costs are development and which are just keeping some servers running, I would also expect a substantial gap between "development ends" and "the servers are finally shut down"

 

[anShpan]

Spread of Cloud-based technologies forcing Server-side infrastructure to be more and more price-competitive. Basically, expenses on running servers can go down over time.
Let's not forget that Elite already has huge value as a Brand on its own. That value will be only growing with time. Perhaps, like a Mascot for hokey team it does not have to be very profitable to be kept in future.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I'm curious if FDev have made any plans for when the game reaches the end of it's life, when server shutdown day arrives.

Probably just switch the servers off and wave goodbye, why should they do any different if the game no longer supports itself?

 

[kepler68]

As this is a live service game it will continue until its not cost effective then it's either shut down or a new iteration arrives. I might be wrong don't quote me but I'm sure FD said in the 2010s they'd make the game files available for private hosting but I couldn't be miss informed. This post is a bit morbid. Elite is no where near dying so I wouldn't worry about it. The games doing quite well at the moment.

I brought it up from the new momentum Stop Killing Games was getting, and seeing ED as a game that could be lost if the initiative fails. I know it's doing fantastic right now with Trailblazers!

In terms of Frontier's official statements we only really have the ones made in mid-2014, after they'd announced that the offline mode wasn't workable and were trying to reassure people who'd been playing FE2/FFE for twenty years that they could expect to do the same with Elite Dangerous.

- they will be taking regular backups of the game state as an archive
- they would hope [1] at end-of-life to release a static copy which people could use in some form (people have "remembered" this as releasing the server code or in some way open-sourcing it; these are both highly optimistic, a client patched to read galaxy data from a static file on disk and store data to a local singleplayer savegame would meet what was said and feels more likely as their intent)

Since then there's been nothing further said on the matter, presumably because the game has continued reliably bringing in new players and a steady (if niche) income sufficient to fund both operations and development and there's been no sign that shutting down the server-based version might be necessary in the foreseeable future.


[1] Frontier said a lot of things in 2013/2014 before really knowing how technically possible they might be. It might be that after multiple decades of server-based operation this might end up to be something they can't affordably do. Or it might be that they have developer-mode clients that already do this so that devs can test out changes without needing a full server infrastructure up and running, and it'd be a few week's work to make one of those releasable. There's no way for us to guess either way.

This is huge to hear, and helps settle these worries. Fingers crossed this promise is still viable when the end eventually comes, thank you!
Plus i'm sure EDSM or Inara will have a data dump avaliable that we can get working with the client haha!

 

[Stealthie]

Based on the way FDev has been supporting ED over the last year or so, I get the feeling that they've realised it can continue to make money as long as they put a little bit of effort into it.

My guess would be that ED's EOL is going to come as the result of a different developer creating a game that takes players away from ED.
If that happens, FDev will probably just make an announcement and then turn off the lights a few months later.

 

[Cosmo]

My guess would be that ED's EOL is going to come as the result of a different developer creating a game that takes players away from ED.
If that happens, FDev will probably just make an announcement and then turn off the lights a few months later.

Ultima Online (1997) is the first successful MMORPG. It lost many players to newer MMOs. However, after nearly 28 years it's still online and supported by Electronic Arts, because it keeps making money and the Ultima franchise is valuable. The 8th expansion Kingdom Reborn upgraded the graphics in 2007. It has around 1500-3000 concurrent players on the official servers per hour. There's no other game that completely replaces UO. People can play UO for free (Endless Journey) with the core features and some limits (banking and housing). To play the full game requires a paid monthly subscription.

There's no other space game that does all the things that ED offers. So I'm quite certain ED will go the same way as UO.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'm pretty sure FD themselves don't know what they will do when the time comes or even when that time will be. Too many variables.

 

[Sylow]

This is huge to hear, and helps settle these worries. Fingers crossed this promise is still viable when the end eventually comes, thank you!
Plus i'm sure EDSM or Inara will have a data dump avaliable that we can get working with the client haha!

Got to see. It was one of the promises they made in 2014 or so. Up to now, whenever they had the chance to make good on one of their promises of that time, they decided against it.

I mean, it would be awesome if at the end of the lifetime they would stick to their promise and give us the server code. So we would either have the option to run LAN servers (or local host servers, if you want to basically play solo), or release the server code itself. Then could then have something like Warhammer Return of Reckoning.

My doubts here simply are: there's no money to be made by investing extra effort into giving an adjusted version of the code to the community. And based on FDs history the last years, no profit means it won't be done in the end.

 

[Cosmo]

I mean, it would be awesome if at the end of the lifetime they would stick to their promise and give us the server code. So we would either have the option to run LAN servers (or local host servers, if you want to basically play solo), or release the server code itself. Then could then have something like Warhammer Return of Reckoning.

Fdev will likely not give us a complete, offline-version, because some MMO-ish features cannot work offline and Fdev cannot monetize a stand-alone, offline version.

ED is a unique online (space) game and keeps making money just like Ultima Online. So ED will stay online for decades to come.

 

[Maximillian Forrest]

Been playing Elite since it was first launched for the BBC B in the 80’s. As far as I’m concerned, I have a healthy list of other games which could easily take up any slack should Elite cease to exist.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

My doubts here simply are: there's no money to be made by investing extra effort into giving an adjusted version of the code to the community.

"Giving to the community", no, obviously not. The question will be how much it costs to make an adapted client for sale as a singleplayer game versus how many nostalgia sales of it they expect to get over the following N years - with the tricky thing being that, given that this only happens if the current version can't sustain itself on ongoing sales, the market for that sort of thing will be by definition a lot smaller than it is now.

(On the other hand, that has the practical advantage that probably well over 90% of the people currently reading this thread will also largely have forgotten about Elite Dangerous by then and not care either way)

 

[Aashenfox]

What is dead can never die. Or something.

 

[Aashenfox]

In all seriousness though, crypto fixes this. Just transfer the very basics of the stellar forge to a smart contract interaction, dedicate some blockchain storage to it (one time fee forever) and bam, it works (albeit slower but let's see improvements over the next 10 years) as long as the internet exists.