The end of days is rapidly approaching for Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, the Final Fantasy franchise’s first-ever effort at taking on the beloved Battle Royale sub-genre. Having been announced in January of 2021, and released in November of that same year, The First Soldier has struggled to capture an audience in the mobile space, and consequently will be closing its doors early in the new year.
The news was broken via Square-Enix’s social media channels, where the news read: “We are regretful to announce that we will be ending service for Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier at 07:00 UTC on January 11, 2023. We would like to thank you all for all your support over the past year.”, and was expanded upon with an image that read
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.
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 Solider.
We would like to thank you all for supporting us over the past year.
Although there is only a little less than 3 months until service ends, we will continue to make updates during this time, so we hope you will continue to enjoy Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier until the very end.
October 12, 2022
-From everyone on the FF7FS team
This is of course not the only live service title from Square-Enix to have been recently shuttered. It was only a month ago when the company announced that its collaboration with PlatinumGames, Babylon’s Fall was to be shut down due to player numbers as well. In the case of Babylon’s Fall, the game never had a chance, launching to dismal player numbers, often lingering in single or double-digit amounts, and never recovering. While the life of Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier was longer than that of Babylon’s Fall, it’s only lived slightly longer before the online doors were closed on players.
Square-Enix has long struggled to find the pulse of players in the live service arena with the above duo failing to resonate, 2020’s Marvel’s Avengers title not hitting the mark on the quality bar, while even Final Fantasy XIV, one of the company’s biggest breadwinners today, launched in a deplorable state in 2010, and needed a full rebuild before it could become what we know the game to be today. With PlatinumGames already signaling their intent to return to the live service well, and Square-Enix undoubtedly cooking up something themselves too, let’s hope that their next attempt is a winner.
