Here are a few services, apps, features, games, and other products that were withdrawn off the market this year, as well as the reasons for their removal.

The year 2021 was difficult. On the one hand, COVID-19 vaccines became a reality, and we saw flashes of normalcy in the second half of the year, but they did not, at least not yet, terminate the pandemic. This year was a bit of a mixed bag for the tech industry. While the world’s largest digital companies, such as Apple and Samsung, unveiled their flagship phones and Facebook changed its name to ‘Meta,’ several participants called it quits, killing off important features and services in 2021.

Here’s a fast list of significant apps, hardware, features, and services that will be phased out by 2021.

HouseParty’s sad demise

Epic Games said in September of this year that it will discontinue its video chat app Houseparty in October 2021. We certainly did not anticipate it to happen so quickly, given that it was one of the most popular video calling apps in 2020 when people were confined to their homes due to the epidemic. Notably, Epic Games purchased the app in 2019. Houseparty is “focused on building new methods to engage meaningful and real social interactions at metaverse scale within the Epic Games family,” according to the business.

Minecraft Earth died as a result of the pandemic.

The popular augmented-reality smartphone game was discontinued on June 30 of this year. Why you might ask? Well, Microsoft had developed the game on unfettered movement and collaborative play — two things that would not have been feasible due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s restrictions. COVID-19 not only crippled us physically and mentally, but it also took away one of the major games this year.

Apple discontinued the first HomePod.

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Apple discontinued the first-generation HomePod speaker four years after it was released. The tech behemoth stated that it is discontinuing the premium smart speaker in order to focus on the smaller version, HomePod Mini. The first HomePod failed to capture much attention (particularly given its high price tag) and cheaper competitors from Amazon and Google. In India, the smart speaker was priced at Rs 19,900 before it was discontinued.

LG has called it quits on its faltering phone industry.

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Wing LG.

Even after coming up with weird concepts for smartphones such as the LG Wing, LG V50 ThinQ 5G Dual Screen, and others, LG realized it was up against a brick wall. As a result, it decided to close its mobile shop. The technology firm was unable to compete with large industry rivals such as Samsung and Apple or to acquire customer attention. It declared in a statement that it will focus on “electric car components, connected devices, smart homes, robots, artificial intelligence, and business-to-business” in the future.

Twitter fleets have vanished (no one is protesting!).

Twitter, like Instagram Stories, has added the Fleets feature to its site. Users could contribute films, text, and other content to Fleets, which would be immediately erased after 24 hours. It obviously didn’t work well for the microblogging site, as it removed its short-lived disappearing narrative feature in August 2021. The corporation admitted that launching this service on Twitter was a poor decision. “We’re sorry or you’re welcome,” it said in a tweet announcing the termination of this service.