The ticking time bomb of modern free-to-play games

guest · Sep 3, 2022

When games like Dragalia Lost shut down for good, what happens next?
By Alicia Haddick - September 1, 2022

Dragalia Lost launched in 2018 as a statement of intent from Nintendo in partnership with Japanese developer Cygames.
Nintendo may have first jumped into the field of mobile games in 2016 with the launch of games like Super Mario Run and Miitomo, but this was the first original property the company had produced exclusively for mobile devices.

This free-to-play gacha game (a game whose content is generally free to access while charging microtransactions for loot boxes and randomized lotteries for rare and limited-time characters) had a flashy multi-region launch campaign collaborating with major Japanese musician DAOKO, banking on the game’s success at home and abroad.
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And it was a hit. Less than a year after launch, the game had already earned over $100 million, with a steady stream of merchandise following soon after. Yet, as of last month, Nintendo and Cygames published the game’s final update, and this week, it was revealed that the game would shut down on November 29th after just three years of operation.
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Without any announcement from Nintendo of an official offline version or archive to memorialize the game after servers shut down and the game is no longer accessible to the public, fans are working across the community to preserve everything they can of a game they dedicated themselves to over the last few years.

“Especially with games like Dragalia Lost and games that are on a live server and stuff, once the server closes down, you can’t play that anymore,” explains Sei, an active member of the game’s community.
“It’s not like you can download a ROM of a Game Boy game and play it: once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
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It’s an issue that’s only going to become more important to a growing number of players as time goes on. What will happen to the millions of players who bought skins in Fortnite or rolled for new characters in Genshin Impact once servers for both of those titles inevitably close down at some point in the future?

Examples like these will only grow in years to come, with billions in player spending, years of development time, and thousands of hours of player engagement being lost on a yearly basis.
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The ticking time bomb of modern free-to-play games

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