Mobile MMORPG Gran Saga faceplants out of the blocks and is shuttered four months after release

Just as one MMORPG prepares to rise, one is sunsetting, as Gran Saga has announced it is shuttering. You might be thinking, “I never had time to try that one”, and you would probably be right because it only lasted four months before this announcement. Developers NPIXEL want to give Square a run for their money, it seems. 

The thing that staggers me most is the money involved. Gran Saga reportedly cost $25 million to develop, and it's gone in four months. That is $6 million per month. You would have to burn $200k every day for four months to meet that. And that's just development; add running costs to that. It's wild.

To walk away from a project that pricey, you'd think the developers would have a good reason. I am talking about, “We accidentally created Skynet and it ate our dogs” level of catastrophe. And even then, for $25 million, you might just think, “Well, getting a cat isn't too bad surely, let's continue”. Instead, the reason is much more mundane and dog-friendly.

As announced on TwiX and the official Gran Saga website, the reason this is shutting down is because they are struggling to “provide a continuous stable service”. If I recall, that is near enough the same reason Square recently gave for closing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. It’s hard not to think that surely it just wasn’t bringing in the cash. After that much capital, investing in a better server would have been the first step if NPIXEL felt it was worth saving.

Now onto the exciting part. Cold hard facts, be still my beating heart. If you wanted to try out Gran Saga before it closed, well, tough. Since March 6th it has been un-downloadable. Even if you owned it, if you deleted it you are out of luck. 

Players who have it on their phones can say their goodbyes until April 30th, at which point service will terminate, along with the Gran Saga official page and SNS. Finally, the Official Forum will end on June 2nd, and then we will have to say goodbye to a product that barely had a chance to spread its wings. Always a sad time.