Square Enix has introduced that they are going to shut down the FF7-themed cell recreation Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier on January 11, 2023, at 07:00 UTC/GMT (02:00 AM EST, 23:00 -1 day PST). The firm additionally instantly eliminated the characteristic to buy extra Shinra Credits with actual cash, though gamers can nonetheless use the prevailing credit till the eventual shutdown.

The First Soldier is a free-to-play battle royale recreation. It additionally has a storyline that takes place within the FF7 universe 30 years earlier than Cloud Strife’s story begins. The cell recreation launched concurrently worldwide on November 17, 2021.

Today’s end-of-service announcement additionally seems globally, regardless that The First Soldier has not even reached its first anniversary but. By the time of its shutdown, the sport’s lifespan would barely final for a 12 months and nearly two months.

Square Enix has been notoriously recognized for releasing many games-as-a-service titles in recent times, however solely to close them down after a brief interval. The firm has Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis—a cell compilation of 4 FF7 spin-offs from Advent Children to Dirge of Cerberus—as a free-to-play recreation. But The First Soldier’s quick lifespan might even put Ever Crisis’ into query as a literal existential disaster.

Outside of the Final Fantasy collection, Square Enix additionally launched the PlatinumGames-developed Babylon’s Fall as a live-service recreation. Despite having paid bodily and digital releases, the title is online-exclusive and thus might be rendered utterly unplayable when the corporate shuts down its server on February 28 subsequent 12 months.

You also can learn Square Enix’s end-of-service announcement for Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier proper under.

After nearly a 12 months of leaping round on chocobos, mashing it up in melee battles, and sniping from the rooftops of Midgar Undercity, it’s with a heavy coronary heart that we’re asserting the tip of service for FINAL FANTASY VII THE FIRST SOLDIER.

We might be ending service at 07:00 UTC on January 11, 2023.

Despite all our efforts to convey you common updates with recent and thrilling content material, we have not been in a position to ship the expertise that we had been hoping to, and that you just all deserve, so we now have made the extraordinarily robust determination to finish service for FINAL FANTASY VII THE FIRST SOLDIER.

We want to thanks all for supporting us over the previous 12 months.

Although there may be solely rather less than 3 months till service ends, we are going to proceed to make updates throughout this time, so we hope you’ll proceed to take pleasure in FINAL FANTASY VII THE FIRST SOLDIER till the very finish.

10/12/2022 (Wed.)

-From everybody on the FF7FS workforce