ArcheAge will shut down in North America and Europe in June after a series of changes, including a merger with ArcheAge: Unchained, still didn’t result in enough players to sustain operations.
Kakao Games announced the closure today, setting June 27th at 8am UTC / 4am ET as the final day for the servers. Player population had been an issue for a while, and was one of the reasons the teams had presented the idea of a merger with ArcheAge: Unchained to the community, aside from an outright closure of Unchained. The community approved of the major merge, and it went through in late 2023. Their roadmap included cross-server options (also aimed at making it easier to play together), and the long-awaited fairy race this year.
The hope seemed to be that the change would result in more concentrations of active players that would enable the major features, including faction conflict, and much more, to continue. Seems like it was, ultimately, not enough. Today was the final new content update.
“After discussing the performance of ArcheAge with XL Games at length, we have concluded that we’re no longer able to provide the MMORPG we envisioned. The declining number of active players means the game’s content is no longer accessible in the way it used to be, and the experience of it is different from what was originally intended. In light of this, we’ve made the difficult decision to terminate the live service of ArcheAge in Europe and North America.”
The team then thanked all the players who've devoted their time to ArcheAge, as part of their three factions before committing to support the service through the end. Customer support will be available for three additional months, until September 27th, after the game closes down. You can no longer buy credits in the shop.
Anyone who still has Patron time left will have their remaining time exchanged for credits to spend through service end. Scheduled events will go on, including an equipment giveaway. Further plans to support the last few months may be announced.
