Ridge Racer has come a long way since the first arcade game was released over 20 years ago. Sadly, for a while now a lot of it has been downhill.
A champion of the earlier PlayStation eras, the game's been on a sharp decline since its infamous appearance at Sony's 2006 E3 appearance, culminating in the "release" of Ridge Racer Driftopia in 2013.
A free-to-play racing game for the PC, made by the same guys who made FlatOut, it's been a disaster, most obviously because it will have taken this post to remind you the game even existed.
There was an interesting feature with the game's developers, Bugbear, a few months back in Edge, where they basically shrug their shoulders, place a lot of the blame at Namco Bandai's feet and get on with making awesome games again.
Eurogamer reports that the game - which has never left beta - will have its servers shutdown on August 15, with no word on its future except "All the feedbacks will be taken into account for the upcoming projects."
So yeah, it's dead then. Which is well-deserved, since its free-to-play model involved paying to repair the damage your car sustained in races.
Bandai Namco to shut down F2P Ridge Racer Driftopia servers [Eurogamer]