Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier, the Square Enix-helmed battle royale game for mobile devices, will be shutting down on 11 January 2023, after only a year of live service. Until the game is shut off, updates will continue – but fans will only have a few more months to enjoy rounds together.
The news was announced via Twitter, although the reason for shut down remains unclear. The Square Enix development team has apologised for not being able to deliver the game it promised, and claimed the decision to end service was not taken lightly.
‘It is with a heavy heart that we are announcing the end of service for Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier. We will be ending service at 07:00 UTC on January 11, 2023,’ the update read.
‘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.’
Read: Square Enix failure Babylon’s Fall is set to shut down in February 2023
Square Enix made clear that updates will continue for the next three months, at which point the game will be shut down, and will become unplayable for everyone.
Strangely, live service for the non-English language version of the game will end ahead of this planned shut down, with the game’s text being English-only from 1 November 2022 – effectively locking out a portion of the global market early.
As of 13 October, Shinra Credits have been removed from the game’s store, with no further in-game purchases available for players unless they already have Shinra Credits stored.
The speed of the Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier shut down is fairly surprising, although the news arrives following the similarly shocking end of live service for Square Enix’s Babylon’s Fall, a multiplayer adventure game considered the company’s biggest failure of 2022. Both games failed to find a hearty audience, which is likely what led to their demise.
Keen players are still able to jump into The First Soldier over the coming months, but should be wary of that upcoming 11 January 2023 shut down. As quickly as the game arrived, it will soon disappear.
