Yesterday, we covered the news that Bless Online was sunsetting in Japan, leading many of us to wonder whether the Steam version live in the west for the last year was next. Unfortunately, that does appear to be the case, as Neowiz just announced on Steam that the game will close on September 9th.
“Starting after server maintenance on June 10th, 2019 and until September 8th, 2019 23:59, sales of all digital products within Steam will be disabled, prices of items in the in-game stores will drastically decrease, the entry limits to all Dungeons will be removed, and the Dungeon drop rates will be increased. Players will also see a 100% increase in Gathering/Mining EXP, Guild EXP, EXP gained from hunting, Dungeon Points, and Combat Points. Gathering, Mining, and Crafting speeds will be increased by 50%.”
As we noted yesterday, Neowiz shut down its Korean servers last fall, telling us that it would be focusing all of its dev resources on the Steam version. However, that version has been in decline since its shaky launches last summer; according to Steam Charts, it’s peaked at under 500 players in the last month, down from 27,000 at launch. And we hadn’t heard much from the company since April, when the Neowiz Bless Studio was merged back into parent company Neowiz, which itself is separately still working on the reimagining of Bless for Xbox One as Bless Unleashed alongside Bandai Namco.
Our sympathies extend to players and crew.
