Category: Defunct

Bless Online Goes Offline September 9


Among the splendor of the E3 game reveals, Neowiz has announced that Bless Online will be shutting down in the west as of September 9. The title launched into early access on Steam one year ago in June 2018 to a respectable peak of 28,000 players but players very quickly jumped ship due to a number of issues ranging from prevalent botting to balance problems and performance on even the best of gaming PCs. By the following month, the peak count had dropped by 80% and it never quite recovered.

To send the game off, Neowiz is launching a bonus experience event starting June 10th and running until sunset time for those of you who want to grind out some Steam achievements before the servers go offline forever.

Starting after server maintenance on June 10th, 2019 and until September 8th, 2019 23:59 Dungeons wants to be removed, and the Dungeon drop rates will be increased. Players want to see a 100% increase in Gathering / Mining EXP, Guild EXP, Dungeon Points, and Combat Points. Gathering, Mining, and Crafting speeds will be increased by 50%. 

Despite Bless failing in virtually every territory it has launched in, Neowiz plans on releasing a version on the Xbox One under the name Bless Unleashed.

Source: Steam

Atlas Reactor No Longer Sustainable, Will Shut Down


Trion World’s title Atlas Reactor will sunset on June 28, 2019. The title was launched in 2016 under Trion Worlds and transferred along with Trion’s other assets to Gamigo when the company suddenly shut down last year.

Mervin Lee Kwai, Vice President of Development at gamigo and a former Executive Producer: “Atlas Reactor was a truly innovative game built by a passionate group of highly skilled developers. I was lucky enough to watch our team breathe life into the world of Atlas on a daily basis. They broke the mold of same-y games, and a dedicated community rallied around the title. Despite the support of this great group of fans, Atlas Reactor never grew big enough to fund its continued development. It’s a shame to see this chapter come to a close, but perhaps we’ll have a chance to revisit the innovative spirit of Atlas in the future.”

As part of the shut down, players who logged in between January 1 and April 16 will receive a small parting gift. The cash shop has been shut down and experience, flux, and ISO rates have been boosted dramatically for the duration of the game’s life.

Source: Atlas Reactor

What Happened: Global Adventures Abandoned And Left To Die


Global Adventures is a game that MMO Fallout gave away beta keys for back in December 2017, and the fact that so many keys were left to grab is probably an early warning that the game was going to go down like a wet fart. Actually, the fact that the game shut down rather quickly in China should be the first indication that a release westward would be a commercial failure, but here we are.

Like many of its kind, Global Adventures hit closed beta and then…disappeared. The last Tweet sent out by the Global Adventures account is from January 6, 2018. The latest news post on Steam is for maintenance on February 16, 2018. There are reviews in March that suggest the server was still online at that point, followed by a review in July noting the server being dead.

In their infinite disregard for community relations, Suba Games has never acknowledged the abandonment of Global Adventures, nor did they allow for refunds from players who purchased packs only to have the game abandoned in beta. Months later, they haven’t even bothered taking the game off of Steam or delisting it from their website. In fact, the only official acknowledgment comes from Suba’s community manager, who points to the developer PixelSoft suddenly disappearing after failing to fix major bugs in the game.

“I would like to clarify this time around that Suba Games is a publisher, not a developer. The developer for Global Adventures is PixelSoft, who seemingly disappeared after constantly failing to fix major bugs and making excuses about it. This makes it so Suba Games cannot deliver their promises of giving out exclusive rewards during open beta, as there probably never will be an open beta. Of course, I do not agree with the idea of selling early access and opening a closed beta cash shop when the developers have proven to be shoddy already.

“Since PixelSoft abandoned the game, there’s nothing Suba Games can do but to follow suit and abandon the game as well. Again, this does not excuse the terrible business decisions Suba Games ended up making to disappoint the fanbase of the game, especially with their no refund policy.”

Does anyone else remember Global Adventures’ short lived relevance?

Dirty Bomb To Stay Online Despite Development Ending


Dirty Bomb is a free to play shooter developed by Splash Damage and published by Warchest Ltd. The game launched in June 2015 and has garnered a mostly positive 79% approval rating on Steam with an average concurrent player count of nearly a thousand at any given time, according to Steam Charts.

Despite this, it looks like the game hasn’t been performing as well in the money department as Splash Damage announced today that development on the title would cease. An announcement posted on the game’s Steam forums today revealed that a coming bug fix build in the next few weeks will be the last that the title will see.

After regaining publishing rights for DB nearly two years ago, we staffed up a load of developers and tried our best to deliver a Dirty Bomb experience that would be feature-rich with tons of new content, while maintaining its great gameplay feel & balance. Unfortunately, despite all the added time and resources, there were some challenges we couldn’t overcome, and we were not able to make DB the success that we hoped it could be. The bottom line is that we can’t financially justify continuing to work on the game we love.

According to the announcement, official servers will stay online as long as the community numbers support it. In addition, all merc packs purchased by January 31, 2019 will be refunded.

Since we won’t be releasing any additional Mercenaries, we’re going to refund the All Merc Pack DLC to everyone who purchased it by January 31st, 2019 – the money you spent will go back in your Steam wallet and the unlocked Mercs will remain in your account. We know many of you love DB and still play it religiously, so we will keep servers up for you to enjoy, as long as there are a meaningful number of players using them in the supported regions.

(Source: Steam)

Wildstar To Shut Down, Carbine Studios Will Close


Carbine Studios will close its doors and Wildstar Online will shut down, according to an announcement released today by NCSoft. Kotaku broke the story, noting that the layoffs at Carbine will include 50 people and comes after at least two projects failed to gain traction with the studio’s parent company and publisher.

NCSoft stated to Kotaku,

“WildStar players who have spent money within the game will be refunded purchases from July 1, 2018 until the payment system is shut off. We are also in the process of identifying the teams that will be doing the work to bring WildStar to a close. These decisions are very difficult to make and we are in the midst of shifting as many of our teammates as possible into other roles within the organization.”

NCSoft’s reluctance to shut down Wildstar came off as confusing, despite effectively ending major content support and refusing to even acknowledge the title by name in its quarterly earnings reports. There have not been any concrete details released as of yet on when Wildstar will sunset its servers.

As of this article, the official Wildstar website has not posted an announcement related to this news.

Just Defunct: Daybreak To Shut Down Early Access Just Survive


Daybreak Game Company has announced that Just Survive, formerly known as H1Z1, is to sunset on October 24 after three years of early access. In the announcement, Daybreak noted “we are no longer in a position to fulfill its greatness and the current population of the game makes it untenable to maintain.”

Just Survive was part of our first Early Access project, and we learned a great deal during its development. As with any open world game, the greatest stories came from our passionate players. From the incredibly skilled base builders to the free-ranging gangs, and all of the players named variations of “ImFriendly” and “PleaseDontShootMe”, we hope everyone had amazing adventures across Pleasant Valley and Badwater Canyon.

Originally launched into early access in January 2015, Just Survive released as H1Z1 before being split off into two products and renamed H1Z1: Just Survive and ultimately dropping the H1Z1 moniker altogether. All in-game purchases for Just Survive have been disabled.

In May, Daybreak thanked players for their continued support while laying out plans for the future of the title.

(Source: Daybreak)

RuneScape Classic Officially Shuts Down


The earliest commercial version of RuneScape has shut down today after seventeen years of service. RuneScape Classic, previously known just as RuneScape, launched in 2001 with a handful of servers and an even smaller handful of developers, going on to amass far more interest than creator Andrew Gower could have ever anticipated. In 2004, RuneScape launched a major update to its engine, introducing RuneScape 2 and relegating the initial version to the now unsupported “Classic” title.

Jagex has kept the Old School servers online for fourteen years despite not officially supporting the product, and eventually shut down the ability for new accounts to even access the servers due to the sheer number of bot accounts and Jagex’s inability to provide updates due to the game no longer being supported. Account registration was periodically opened up over the years, and in May it was finally announced that the servers would be brought down for good due to accumulating bugs and Jagex’s inability to keep the game properly supported.

Players gathered to watch the servers come down for one last time today, with the event permanently etched in digital stone via the Twitch link below.

Lawbreakers Will Shut Down In September, Now Free To Play


When Boss Key Productions announced its closure back in May, the question of its two titles sunsetting became a matter of when, not if. As of today, competitive shooter Lawbreakers has been made officially free to play in preparation for the servers to sunset in September. No information has been posted to Radical Heights, which is already free to play, on when that game will follow suit.

The announcement in its entirety has been posted below. All in-game purchases have been disabled and no refunds are being granted.

(Source: Steam)

Dear LawBreakers,

In light of the unfortunate news regarding Boss Key Productions shutting down, we regret to announce that we will be sunsetting our support of LawBreakers on September 14, 2018 as we are not able to operate the game.

Our servers will remain open until then and the game will be made free-to-play on Steam for all players effective immediately. Please note that any and all new in-game purchases will also be disabled and we will not be able to accept any refund requests.

We truly appreciate your understanding in this difficult time and we want to thank you all your support and being a part of the passionate LawBreakers community.

Thank you for staying with us throughout this journey.

-The LawBreakers Team

Gigantic To Shut Down Following Motiga Layoffs


Following their statement in November that Perfect World Entertainment had laid off a number of staff at Motiga, we have learned this week that MOBA title Gigantic will shut down. As of today, purchasing of rubies and hero packs have been disabled, and all heroes will be free until the servers shut down at the end of July.

It is with heavy hearts that we announce the January Update is the final content update for Gigantic, and the game servers will be discontinued on July 31, 2018. The journey over these last few years was met with outstanding support from our players and we are all very proud of the incredible experience Gigantic is today.

Motiga and Perfect World had been seeking ways to keep the game sustainable, unfortunately Gigantic did not resonate with a base large enough to keep the game going. Gigantic follows in the steps of Paragon which recently announced its own sunsetting for just the same reason.

(Source: Gigantic)

Is Paragon Unsustainable? Yes, Also Shutting Down


It’s barely been ten days since we reported that Paragon was likely unsustainable and that Epic would be giving it another look in the coming weeks.

“Over the next few weeks, we’ll be figuring out if and how we can evolve Paragon to achieve growth and success, and trying some things internally. In the meantime, Paragon’s release cadence will be slower.”

Evidently the decision was much easier than originally thought, because a week after this announcement Epic has announced the imminent closure of Paragon. In a rare statement, Epic took full responsibility for Paragon’s inability to draw in players, and apologized for failing the community despite the team’s hard work.

We didn’t execute well enough to deliver on the promise of Paragon. We have failed you — despite the team’s incredibly hard work — and we’re sorry.

Servers will shut down on April 26, however Epic warns that the quality of matchmaking will degrade naturally as players leave. Epic is offering full refunds for every purchase on any platform.

Instructions for a refund are as follows:

  1. If you’re not playing on PC, link your Epic account (create one if necessary).
  2. If you play on PC, or have already linked your Epic account, you can request your refund here.

(Source: Epic)