Square Enix’s attempt to move into the battle royale genre has not gone well: it is closing Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier in January 2023.
Pitched as a Final Fantasy VII-themed spin on battle royale, the game launched in November 2021 and is in its fourth season of content, but has not met expectations at Square Enix, according to a statement released today.
“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,” says a post on the game’s site.
“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 VII The First Soldier. We would like to thank you all for supporting us over the past year.”
Monetisation is being stripped out of the game today, though players with existing Shinra Credits can still spend them on in-game items until the game shuts down for good on January 11 2023.
Appmagic data suggests that Square Enix has earned $3.2m from the title to date, after just over 2m lifetime downloads. Revenue peaked at launch in November 2019, when Square Enix earned $627k from the title, but it has been in decline ever since, earning just $101k last month.
After 1.25m downloads in its first month, The First Soldier did not gather any further momentum, and was installed just 23k times last month.
