Bless Online Shutting Down In Japan In August

After fewer than two years of live service, Bless Online will be shutting down in Japan. In a statement on the game's Japanese website (with help from Google Translate), developer Neowiz stated that "it did not meet the expectation" and that the dev team "decided to make a painful decision to end the service."

Bless Online launched in Japan under the umbrella of publisher GameOn through game portal Pmang on Nov. 2, 2017. Its last day of service will be Aug. 8, 2019. Its closure will represent the third region the game has shut down in, following Korea and Russia -- not to mention losing its publisher, Aeria Games, in the West.

As for the Western version of the game, published by Neowiz directly, it's tracking at just over 200 players online at any one time, which doesn't seem like a long-term recipe for success. The console-based Bless Unleashed in still in the works, but you'd have to be a wizard to figure out how it could succeed where Bless Online has failed in so many regions.