Final Fantasy 7 mobile battle royale The First Soldier shuts down next year
Soldiers discharged.
Square Enix's Final Fantasy 7 battle royale The First Soldier will shut down in January next year.
The game was first released in November 2021, meaning its shelf life was a little over 12 months.
News of its end was announced on Twitter: "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 game will officially end service on 11th January 2023. In-game Shinra Credits will be removed from the shop today, but any already purchased can still be used until the end of service.
Support for non-English languages will end on 1st November.
The battle royale game for mobile was set before the events of the main Final Fantasy 7 game, with players battling as Soldier candidates.
Despite regular support, such as including polygonal characters from the original game, it has seemingly proven less popular than Square Enix had hoped.
There's also another Final Fantasy 7 mobile game on the way: Ever Crisis, a remaster of the original game with revamped visuals. It is yet to receive a specific release date but is expected this year.
Elsewhere for Final Fantasy 7 fans, the remaster of Crisis Core will be out in December and now feels consistent with Final Fantasy 7 Remake.