Five years after the game's initial launch in Japan, Square Enix is discontinuing worldwide support for its mobile RPG Mobius Final Fantasy this summer. Wednesday's announcement follows the Japanese version of the game's discontinuation, which happened at the end of last month.
Mobius Final Fantasy's end of service date has been set for June 30 at 6 p.m. Pacific Time, which will also mark the conclusion of its Warrior of Despair storyline. Players will be able to purchase the Magicite currency until March 31 at 8 p.m. Pacific, and any previously bought Magicite will be available for use until the end of service.
Mobius made an effort to turn the complete Final Fantasy experience into a portable-friendly package and grew enough in popularity to receive a PC port and a crossover event with Final Fantasy 7 Remake. The gacha-style title was received warmly by players when it arrived in North America in 2016, winning awards from the App Store and Google Play and reaching over 20 million downloads worldwide last May.
Despite having a large download base and enough retention to keep a smaller subset of players coming back, Square Enix's decision to shut Mobius Final Fantasy down is a reminder that there can be more to keeping a game afloat than initial popularity alone. With rival title Fate/Grand Order still going strong after a similar amount of time on the market and a constant stream of new titles with similar microtransaction-focused design strategies in place, it's possible that Square either didn't have the resources to keep Mobius updated with a similar pace, or felt their team could be put to better use elsewhere.
Fans of the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole might be unhappy with the timing of the news, which comes alongside the reveal that Final Fantasy 7 Remake won't make its planned launch window (once again), but with the original versions of FF7 and FF9, among other entries, playable on mobile platforms, there certainly isn't a shortage of content for the franchise if players are looking for their fix on the go.
Mobius Final Fantasy is available on iOS, Android and PC.
Source: Square Enix