You may have noticed a few websites around the place pledge to "shut down" on January 18 in protest against the awful Stop Online Piracy Act. That's all well and good, but now Red 5 Studios, the developers behind the upcoming Firefall, are doing it as well. Thing is, they're shutting down their video game.


Firefall's beta will go offline for all of January 18, as will the game's website. They'll be down for 24 hours, the outage "simulating" the effect SOPA could have on many websites if it's passed.

"We are extremely disappointed in this misguided legislation", Firefall CEO Mark Kern told Shacknews. "We are also ashamed of the ESA for supporting a bill which is clearly not in the best interests of gamers or the game industry".


The ESA is the group organising E3, so as an added gesture, Kern later adds "I just had my staff cancel our E3 plans".

Firefall dev shutting down beta in protest of SOPA [Shacknews]