U.S. Army’s America’s Army: Proving Grounds Mil-Sim Officially Shuts Down On May 5

America’s Army: Proving Grounds, the official free-to-play first-person shooter of the U.S. Army, will be shutting down after nearly eight years in operation.

According to the official announcement, the servers will permanently be taken offline on Thursday, May 5th for PC and PlayStation 4. Private servers, the mission editor, and other offline features, however, will continue to function following the shutdown.

Proving Grounds is the third game in the America’s Army franchise which the U.S. Army uses as a means to educate players on real-world operations and potentially recruit players into active service. The Army also uses the game’s technology for actual training, including medical training using a battlefield triage simulator. Over 20 million players have been drawn to the series since the first America’s Army game launched back in 2013.

“The free-to-play America’s Army PC Game represented the first large-scale use of game technology by the U.S. government as a platform for strategic communication and recruitment, and the first use of game technology in of U.S. Army recruiting. Three mainline titles and more than 20 million AA players later, the series’ original purpose continued. There have been over 30 million objectives completed, 180 million successful missions accomplished, 250 million teammates assisted, and many more in-game achievements attained in AA:PG alone.”

“We look forward to what the future could hold for AA, and encourage you to stay tuned for future announcements on the series,” teased the devs.

America's Army: Proving Grounds PS4 Trailer