While playing We the Giants when we had to for class, I noticed a relative emptiness to the game, almost as if it had been abandoned. Once getting to the end of the game, I of course realized that it had been, victim of a creator who had decided to move on. Games like this particularly suffer from no longer being supported, as they render the game unbeatable, but this problem has become particularly blatant with the rise of games with yearly renditions, such as sports games. We the Giants ends with the player supposed to sacrifice themselves in order to reach this golden star. If you're playing the game now, that goal is impossible, which renders the network closed. This makes the game a relic of its time, merely a part of history, at this point. Had someone played the game when it was active, they could have contributed themselves to the cause of reaching the golden star, even if they did not reach it personally.
Sports games and older games that come every year also face this issue, in terms of completing the game 100%. Achievements in games such as NBA 2K16 that require you to play online are now unachievable, since the servers are no longer active. Of course, anything that you can do offline is still possible, but these games often have more achievements and things to do with a network of people on Xbox Live and Playstation Network than to do with someone sitting on the couch with you. Other games that still have servers up, but have abandoned multiplayers tend to face the same issue, especially if there are multiple entries in the series or if the game is particularly old. One such game is Gears of War, which recently celebrated its 12th anniversary. This game is still playable online, but the player count is extremely low, such that most lobbies will be empty. People on forums like TrueAchievements.com often use this network in order to find people willing to play Gears in order to "boost", or artificially gain, achievements. Evidently, even with networks for some games becoming smaller and smaller, players will use any means to keep the network open as long as possible, even if it brings into question whether some of their actions abide by the rules of the game.