On November 29th of last year Bandai Namco’s Gundam Evolution closed its doors for good, shutting downs its servers and rushing through its final DLCs rapidly before leaving the world of multiplayer video games forever. Or so we thought. While Bandai Namco themselves have basically given up on Gundam Evolution, the fans of the game haven’t. The Side 7 server, a Discord group that revolves around Gundam Evolution, has banded together and now it looks like they’ve put together a server that lets you play even with the game off life support.
Despite the many flaws the game had, most of the problems fans had were with the way the game was packaged, and not with the way the game actually played. People love the IP of Gundam and they genuinely like Gundam Evolution, so it’s good to see the game’s fanbase keeping it afloat even when the publisher and developers won’t. In the case of Gundam Evolution specifically, as stated before the final seasons of DLC were rushed out the door, with beloved mobile suits from the series such as the Zeta Gundam and the Kampfer making an appearance within a very brief window of time before the game shut down, so through the Side 7 Discord you should be able to play those mobile suits to your heart’s content.
Though unfortunately, this is a PC exclusive deal. Console Gundam Evolution players will unfortunately be left out in the snow, but at a time where video games, live service games especially, are hard to preserve this is a great triumph of video game preservation and a nice piece of Gundam media to restore. The passion of the fans has once again proven that they can step up where official support fails, and hopefully fans of Gundam Evolution can enjoy the arena shooter for years to come. As stated though, these are fan servers, so if you want to join their community then feel free to browse their official website and join the Side 7 Discord here: https://side7.xyz/