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2K Support has announced that the servers for NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 will be shutting down permanently on August 20th, 2026. This will mark the end of close to eight years of support following the game’s release way back in October 2018.
Once the servers for NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 are shut down, all of its online modes and functions will obviously be unavailable, including the ability to purchase Golden Bucks and the Roster Unlock. Exhibition games, Season mode, the three-point shootout, and the court editor will all remain available offline.
As I discovered the hard way, the PC version of NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 does not back up your data to the Steam cloud. To that end, it’s absurdly easy to lose all of your progress, including the cards you’ve collected and upgraded. Fortunately, it is possible to manually back up the folder containing that data. You can find those steps below; shout out to the game’s page over on the PC Gaming Wiki for pointing me in the right direction here!
While Saber’s partnership with 2K obviously benefitted NBA Playgrounds in terms of content and marketing, some of our worst fears were realised with the monetisation of the sequel. It arguably also ensured that it wouldn’t become competition to NBA 2K, as plans to continue releasing games beyond NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 never materialised. With EA Sports backing out of developing a college basketball game, it’s now up to Play by Play Studios and NBA The Run to provide an alternative to 2K.
In any case, with the NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 servers shutting down on August 20th, be sure to wrap up any online-related business with the game before then. Feel free to share your thoughts on the game and the impending server shutdown in the comments below, as well as join in the discussion here in the Forum.
Backing Up Data for NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 PC
- Under the Search bar in Windows, enter %LOCALAPPDATA% to locate your AppData\Local folder. Alternatively, you can press the Windows Key + R to bring up the Run box and enter it there.
- Locate the NBAPlaygrounds2 folder within AppData\Local.
- Copy the folder to a safe location, such as an external drive. If you’re using backup software, you can also add the folder to the routine (consult the software’s help file for more information if need be).
- If you ever need to restore your files, copy the NBAPlaygrounds2 folder from your backups to your %LOCALAPPDATA% folder.
