Come January 1st, 2010 Dungeon Runners will be shutting down. In a letter to the community on the official Dungeon Runners website, DR Producer & Lead Programmer Stephen Nichols informs us in a brutally honest, and yes, even slightly humorous letter that Dungeon Runners is simply not "cutting the mustard" and will be shut down.

Mr. Nichols also describes how the teams plans to resuscitate the game were unable to pan out due to the fact they were both expensive and risky; it also didn't help that two of their five developers were lost recently.

To compensate Dungeon Runners players, NCsoft is going to award all Dungeon Runners players (as of 9/16/09) with a 30-day game card, and digital copies of City of Heroes Architect Edition and Guild Wars Prophecies.

Dungeon Runners will also see some changes between now and "End Time" as Mr. Nichols put it, with XP rates to be raised significantly (5x), Mythic loot to drop more frequently, and a reduction in cost for King's Coin vendors.

Oh, and Townston will be nuked when the game shut's down.

Dungeon Runners was a unique, often satirical Diablo-esque MMORPG, spoofing the genre with things like quest text being full of nonsensical gibberish, absolutely hilarious item names and rarity classifications, and creatures such as "Bling Gnomes" which follow you around converting junk into gold for you. Of course, there's also the aforementioned generically named town, Townston.

Truly a sad day for MMOGs! We tip our hats to the developers of Dungeon Runners and wish them all the best going forward!

The announcement can be viewed here.

Have you played Dungeon Runners, or even heard of the game? Does this news come as a surprise to you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!