Square Enix will shut down its mobile RPG-battle royale action title Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier on January 11, 2023. The game will end service just over a year since its November 2021 launch.
This comes as Square Enix has been making some reassessments, including the decision last month to shut down service of Babylon’s Fall in February 2023. Ultimately, it seemed that the game, despite an initial 2 million downloads by December 2021, the audiences didn’t stick around.
“After almost a year of jumping around on chocobos, mashing it up in melee battles, and sniping from the rooftops of Midgar Undercity, it is with a heavy heart that we are announcing the end of service for FINAL FANTASY VII THE FIRST SOLDIER…. Despite all our efforts to bring you regular updates with fresh and exciting content, we haven't been able to deliver the experience that we were hoping to, and that you all deserve, so we have made the extremely tough decision to end service for Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier,” the team announced.
With the Final Fantasy 7 IP regarded as iconic and having seen a number of spinoffs and the 2020 Final Fantasy VII: Remake, it isn’t surprising that Square Enix tried to move into the mobile space with this new RPG. It just seems that, ultimately, it didn’t work out.
There will continue to be some updates until the game shuts down, with scheduled updates set to roll out until that time. However, support for non-English languages will end as of November 1st, with all text in English after that point. After making the announcement, sales in the shop were halted and all remaining Shinra coins are usable until the game ends.
Both Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier and Babylon’s Fall are set to shut down after just around a year of live service.
Read the announcement over at Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier.
