Astellia Online To Shut Down, No Word About F2P Astellia Royal's Fate (UPDATED: Royal's Gone Too)

Remember Astellia Online? That was a not-Free MMORPG released in January 2020 by developer Studio 8, a subsidiary of Barunson E&A. It met with mixed reviews -- literally, according to Steam -- dwindling to a triple-digit player base shortly after launch, and hasn't even risen above double digits since May. That sounds like a game that's ripe for a free-to-play transition or shutdown and, curiously, we have both.

The dev team announced the impending shutdown on the game's Steam community page today, just a day after players noticed that the ability to buy the game had been removed. The game service will go offline October 29, and if you're still playing, you can enjoy triple experience gain and drop rate starting on August 17.

What does that mean for Astellia Royal, the F2P "clone" of Astellia that launched late last year and that looked a lot like its base game? That game has also removed its "Play Game" button from its Steam page, but there's no announcement about any impending shutdown. In fact, the devs have an August login reward event going on until September 2.

That said, Royal is doing about as poorly, player-wise, on Steam as its counterpart, and isn't even getting the boost in revenue that comes from having a box price, so it wouldn't surprise us to see it also getting the axe soon. (Curiously, it's listed as having no viewer reviews despite launching in March.) We doubt that too many people will mourn the loss of either game, but we're certain that someone will, to which we'd say: Did you know there's a free trial of Final Fantasy XIV going on right now?

UPDATE, Aug. 12: Astellia Royal is indeed, predictably, shutting down as well. It will terminate service on October 29, as well.