That’s the question.
Is Astellia and its free to play relaunch Astellia Royal on the cusp of announcing its closure?
Update: Astellia Online is absolutely shutting down.
That’s the thought on my mind today as I try to piece together what the hell is going on with these games. So Astellia Royal caught my attention a couple days ago when the folks at Studio8 full on retired the three founders packs from the Steam store without any announcement or acknowledgement. I didn’t write about it because for all I know some forum post from six months ago announced that the packs would be limited time. I’m not willing to dig through months of news and forum posts to confirm this and the dates don’t really line up with anything.
The item store is absolutely still available.
How does this prove the game might be shutting down, I hear you asking. Well all of that is tangential evidence, but upon further inspection I also noticed that the play button has disappeared from the Steam store page. For both games. Now I might be a stupid, but I’m fairly certain that when the publisher removes any ability for new players to get their hands on the game, that it’s at least a good sign something is happening. The buy to play Astellia itself was pulled from sale on Saturday.
It’s fair to say that both versions of Astellia have been big fat failures in the market thanks mostly to the shameful incompetence of the folks at Studio8. Astellia Royal booted players for having the wrong devices, a fault that Studio8 almost proudly announced its intention to never fix. Astellia Online crashed and burned in Korea which Studio8 decided to blame on Nexon rather than the game’s poor performance. Astellia Royal forces trading through its auction house that exists on cash shop currency.
Astellia hasn’t hit 200 concurrent players since February of this year, while Astellia Royal kicked off with a concurrent pick of less than 800 and dropped to under 200 within a month. It’s hard to imagine either game bringing in much, if any, money and its impending closure should be seen as less of an “if” and more of a “when”.
I think it’s safe to say Studio8 will announce the closure of both games imminently. Probably after I publish this and before most of you read it.
MMO Fallout 