Final Fantasy 7 Battle Royale The First Soldier Shutting Down Barely a Year After Launch

Square Enix has announced that its mobile battle royale, Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier, will shut down on January 11 next year, barely a year after it was released.

Announced on the game’s website, Square Enix said that it couldn’t deliver the service it wanted to despite fairly regular updates to the game, and as a result decided to shut The First Solider down.

“After almost a year of jumping around on chocobos, mashing it up in melee battles, and sniping from the rooftops of Midgar Undercity, it is with a heavy heart that we are announcing the end of service for Final Fantasy 7: The First Solider,” it said.

“Despite all our efforts to bring you regular updates with fresh and exciting content, we haven’t been able to deliver the experience that we were hoping to, and that you all deserve, so we have made the extremely tough decision to end service for Final Fantasy 7: The First Solider.”

The game was only announced at the beginning of 2021 and launched on November 17 that year. Similar to other battle royale games including Fortnite and Apex Legends, The First Soldier had rolling seasons that brought new changes to the game.

Square Enix hoped it would bring battle royale fans into the world of Final Fantasy, encouraging them to check out other games in the series such as 2020’s Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

Despite the news of The First Soldier’s closure, Final Fantasy fans still have a lot to look forward to. A remake of Final Fantasy 7 prequel Crisis Core will be released this December, while the true sequel to Remake, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, will launch the following winter. Stepping away from Final Fantasy 7 and its spin-offs, the next mainline numbered entry arrives next summer with Final Fantasy 16.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.