In the heady days of yesteryear, we believed that removing the need to download a client would be the key to unlocking more people who wanted to jump on the MMO bandwagon. This was one of the major selling points of City of Steam when the game first launched as a browser-based title. Unfortunately, today we come not to praise the game’s prescient structure but to lament its imminent shutdown, with the game servers going offline on January 31st.
The developers cite several issues that ultimately led to the game’s shutdown, chief among them being the fact that Unity is increasingly not supported properly in browsers. The team isn’t fading quietly into the night, with a new title in development; Heroes of Skyrealm is set in the same universe and hopes to use the lessons learned over the years with City of Steam. Our condolences to the fans losing a favorite game, just the same.