Bad news for players of Bless Online in Korea: Neowiz announced today that the game is shutting down in that region as its last remaining servers are sunsetting. November 19th will be the Korean players’ final day in the game.
MMORPG vets will recall that Bless Online originally began testing in South Korea in 2014, followed by delays and then a soft launch open beta there at the beginning of 2016. Neowiz merged servers just a month later, then again a few months later, and then just a year after launch, it was down to two. The Russian server was also closed last year. The western version struggled through the same time period as Aeria/Gamigo bowed out of its publishing duties and Neowiz took on a revamp to self-publish here. It then soft launched into an open beta early access mode here in May, and though it was long-awaited, it wasn’t particularly well-received, and Neowiz has spent the summer shoring up the game ahead of its final launch this year.
The company has also teamed up with Bandai Namco for an Xbox One version of the game, Bless Unleashed, though it’s not a direct port. That game is due out next year.
In a producer’s note on Steam, Neowiz hastened to reassure English-speaking players that the game is still on track in NA and Europe.
“In light of this announcement, we’d like to reiterate Neowiz Bless Studio’s commitment to launching in North America and Europe later this year, and let our fans know that as well as maintaining the KR service until its closure, the team’s resources will be turned to assisting us in preparations for Bless Online leaving Early Access on Steam. The Steam version of Bless Online is our sole focus, and all of our efforts are going into making it successful for years to come.”
“Bless is shutting down in Korea and we’ve lost all our backing in the other places we tried to make a quick cash grab, but this totally won’t affect the English release”
Isn’t Bless a Korean game, so basically they failed in their original country of origin and are using the US as a lifeboat?
If a game isn’t up to Aeria/Gamigo standards, that tells you a lot (as we said back when Aeria/Gamigo first bowed out of publishing). They don’t particularly have high standards to begin with.
Get your refunds while you can – You may be able to argue that your “play time” was mostly patching and leaving the launcher running, but Steam doesn’t even consider allowing them if your purchase was over two weeks before a shutdown or your refund request.
The earlier Mixed reviews have gone to Overwhelmingly Negative lately. I can only imagine that they still are hoping to milk a bit of money out of sales before the Western versions are shuttered as well. For them to make out like all is great and good in the West for this game is a crazy massively filled diaper that needs changing badly.
shit game, no wonder, even over proven shit ppl still got milked on EU/NA side, amazing really.
Bless in NA/EU was just a scam for more money and this proves it.
*reserves this spot for this time next year to see the state of the game then*
Bless korea is a better version than ns. I play it. As no updates since march 2017 yet mega more content than Na this is bs.
Na steam will fall.
Russia fell kr fell. Jp stagnated in ea. Steam is a wsste of time and a hollow game.
I imagine the Steam release was just one final cash grab while in their Death Throes.
I guess Bless wasn’t so Blessed after all 😈
So Bless Unleashed is making it self?
It’s technically a different Neowiz substudio working on Unleashed.
A cool future would be a license allowing individuals to produce games using the Bless assets. “Bless Adventure”, “Bless Quest”, “Bless n’ Roll”…
Don’t forget the obligatory awkward VR tie-in game too, “Bless You”
I got dibs on “Brian BLESSed Online”
Historically Korean MMO’s have always prioritized their domestic players over the foreign ones. The fact that they’ve already given up on the domestic version, says a lot.