Quantic Dream, the developer of Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain, is closing down its MOBA-with-flying game Spellcasters Chronicles, which only launched in early access in February this year.
Quantic Dream said in a statement that Spellcasters Chronicles had not reached the audience it needed to sustain it long-term, and “we have therefore made the difficult decision to refocus our efforts on our other projects”. Steam stat-tracking site SteamDB shows Spellcasters Chronicles had woefully low numbers of players, peaking at 888 daily concurrents at launch before falling to highs of under 100 concurrent daily players since mid-March.
Spellcasters Chronicles.Watch on YouTube
Quantic Dream will undergo some “reorganisation” as a result, which I suspect will mean some lay-offs, but the studio said development of Star Wars Eclipse – a High Republic-era Star Wars adventure announced in 2021 – has not been affected by this.
The Spellcasters Chronicles servers will soon close, remaining accessible until 19th June 2026, when they’ll be shut down. Any money spent during the early access period will be eligible for a full refund upon request, Quantic Dream’s statement said.
Spellcasters Chronicles – an odd proposition for Quantic Dream and the kinds of cinematic, choice-heavy narrative games it typically makes – is the latest in a line of multiplayer games closed this year. Arguably the most high profile was free-to-play shooter Highguard, which closed six weeks after launch, but there was also the sudden closure of Sony’s Concord at the end of last year. BioWare’s Anthem also bowed out in January after a prolonged goodbye as well.
It’s the closure of premium games Concord and Anthem in particular that have attracted the attention of pro-consumer movement Stop Killing Games, which seeks to establish fair, end-of-life rules for multiplayer games people pay for that can be suddenly terminated with reprisal. Stop Killing Games recently presented its case to the European Parliament – a discussion which is ongoing – and it seems to have gone down well.