I’m sorry to report this morning that 10-year-old sci-fantasy MMORPG Skyforge is sunsetting this fall.
“Over the years, you have embarked upon countless adventures, gained thousands of victories in battle, earned billions of various currencies, obtained billions of Argents, and found many loyal allies,” current operator Innova/4game writes. “Aelion’s story has become your own and ours as well. That is why it is incredibly difficult for us to share the following news. Unfortunately, the Skyforge project is going to be closed, and its servers in Europe and America shut down. […] We will do all we can to ensure the shutdown goes as smoothly as possible for you. The Skyforge team will continue supporting its players and maintaining the game until September 3.”
Payments will apparently be disabled tomorrow, with the sunset on PC coming September 3rd and on console October 29th. The accompanying FAQ is actually rather mysterious on the “why” of the sunset. It doesn’t expressly blame a lack of players or revenue; instead, it pins blame on the “rightholder,” which presumably is still MY.GAMES.
“Why is the project shutting down? The rightholder has made the decision to discontinue the project on all platforms. Further details regarding this decision are not disclosed.”
You won’t be able to transfer to another region, either, as apparently all the regions are being killed off together. You can, however, keep on playing until the sunset, and the team is planning some sort of sunset events next month.
Readers will recall that Skyforge was originally developed by Allods Team and Obsidian and operated by the multiple variations of Mail.ru/MYGAMES/My.com over the years. But it hit a major snag last summer, when MY.GAMES – which itself had been split off to a venture capital firm in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – handed off Skyforge’s publishing rights to Innova/4game and gave players a year-long countdown clock to transfer their characters to the new service. But by this past spring, it was clear that the hand-off wasn’t going that well, as Innova/4game struggled to get its launcher and switchover off the ground.
Skyforge was never the world’s biggest or best MMORPG, but it was a solid mid-budget title that mostly suffered from neglect more than lack of quality. That makes this an extra bummer. Condolences to the remaining players as well as to the devs out there who brought the title to fruition and kept it alive.