Online support for a handful of Sony's first-party PlayStation 3 games will be going away in the first half of 2014, Sony has revealed. A support article on the official PlayStation website outlines the upcoming online shutdowns, complete with dates, and offers a list of Sony's previously "decommissioned" games.

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The most noteworthy of the 2014 shutdowns include those of all three Resistance games for PS3 -- Resistance: Fall of Man, Resistance 2, and Resistance 3 -- which will no longer be playable online as of March 28, 2014. Two months later, on May 20, 2014, Gran Turismo 5 will have its online features disabled. Preceding all of this, on January 28, 2014, MAG, SOCOM 4 (also known as SOCOM: Special Forces), and SOCOM: Confrontation will all see their online features cut off.Generally speaking, this means online multiplayer for these games will no longer be possible. They will all still be fully playable offline -- with the exception of MAG and SOCOM: Confrontation, two games which lack offline components. In other words, both games will be rendered unplayable by the shutdowns.The support article detailing all of this was actually last updated in late October, although not all of these shutdowns have been well publicized before now. The SOCOM games and MAG having their online features disabled was announced over the summer, just a year after many of the older games in the SOCOM series received similar treatment last year.Online features being disabled in older games is hardly new; Electronic Arts has done it a number of times in the past with its more dated games, and earlier this year Sony did so with White Knight Chronicles . Despite this, it's no less disappointing for fans who still enjoy -- or would still like to be able to enjoy -- taking advantage of the online features in these games.

Chris Pereira is a freelance writer who spends his spare time agonizing over the final seasons of The X-Files. Check out what he's saying on Twitter and follow him on IGN