Nintendo Announces End Date For Dragalia Lost

I'm hopeful this IP can still be salvaged with a Switch entry or something. With how successful it was on mobile, they can't just throw it away like it never happened.

Shower thought: it's a pity few to no EoS freemiums (that mobile KH game is the only example I seem to recall) at least leave some offline functionality in the form of unlocked datalogs, character showcases and/or event theatres. Even if some licenses for that content expired later, EoS stuff often gets delisted after the cutoff date anyway, so no sweat on that front. Mildly jarring in its own right when games like Dragalia Lost fill up some 9 Gb of your storage and ALL of it is destined to become dead weight one day just because the basic menu transitions no longer have active servers to check back with.

And it never reached my country.

Installing APK didn't work because they closed after a while.

The same will happen to the Steam Deck, I'm sure.

"Thank you to everyone who played Dragalia Lost. We will now be removing this game from existence after people have grown fond of it over the past four years. We would like to thank players for all their money, woops I mean enthusiasm!"

never get chance playing this game. since my mobile sucks perfomance

Expected, but still sad.

Weird, why shut a successful game down. Seems to be another reminder that spending on a mobile game is like flushing money down the toilet.

Never got round to playing it, but why does it need online to work? Did you work with other players to play it? Or is it just logging in to their servers, in other words cloud gaming? Therefore showing how evil and rip-off cloud gaming is.

Now it is truly Dragalia "Lost".

What a shame. I don't play mobile games because they are so nebulous and could disappear at any moment.

So much time and hard work goes into creating character design, worldbuilding, writing, animation, mechanics, balancing.... and for what? it's just gone now. There's no legacy.

What's the point in pursuing a creative endeavor like this if its very existence is not even guaranteed?
This is why I don't pay attention to mobile gaming.

Never played it, but this is a sad time. They’re shutting down so much.. Wii U, 3DS, and now Dragalia Lost 😢

We need an offline version for Switch.

Well, that stinks. I never did get a chance to play it. But I guess this means that Nintendo really doesn't care much about the mobile market as they did a few years ago.

As it is, when was the last time they put out a new mobile game? I would have definitely heard about it if they did, since this site would have announced it, and I check out this site several times a day.

@Bunkerneath Played it a year and a half ago, but the game had some online coop, pvp, and quests, though there was a story single player mode. I think you could do it online, but there was also a solo mode for it.

I don't think this game was ever available here in the Netherlands. The only mobile game from Nintendo I still enjoy playing is FE:H, which I only play on BlueStacks.

You know... I'm starting to suspect this isn't coming to my region's playstore any more...

Glad to see a mobile gacha cashgrab burn to the ground

■ After the end of service
If you start up the Dragalia Lost game after the game's service has ended, an end-of-service notification will be displayed and you will not be able to play the game.

That's just wrong. I get ending updates, and maybe even support, but to make a game simply unplayable seems cruel to people who really enjoy it. And basically robbery to people who spent money on it.

I played it for a few dozen hours when it released, it was fun, but it's hard to game on a phone or tablet when you have a 75" tv screen to play on.

Wiped out of existence has got to be a weird feeling for a creator. I have PC games from the 90's I can still play. Sad.

I started playing the game back when it was announced it would be shutting down and I beat the story about a week after the final chapter released. It was pretty fun and the story and characters were good too. I do hope the ip could live on in some form in the future, but I have my doubts.

@rjejr agreed. I think they should let u buy a version of it. Not sure how it could work here, but I didn’t understand why they did this with Doctor Mario. Why not just let u play it? I just don’t care for mobile gaming, but they should allow u to keep something if u have invested in it….

I tried this out of curiosity. Definitely the most "mobile game" feeling of Nintendo's mobile outings. There's a generous amount of voiced story content and the combat loop is simplistic enough to play one with hand and fun enough. But the convoluted menus and currency systems were tedious and plainly not fun.

I'd rather just buy the game at a standard retail price and unlock gachas through progression rather than deal with the overly complicated free-to-play in-game economy. This is why I generally avoid mobile games. If Draglia Lost can be "consolized" I would give it another go.

Contrary to what this article says, Dragalia Lost does not have a healthy and big enough fanbase, and the revenue generated is well below some other Nintendo mobile titles (especially compared to Fire Emblem Heroes), contributing to its closure. A previous NL article shows the sad truth.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/05/nintendo-close-to-hitting-usd1-8-billion-in-revenue-from-mobile-games

That's why single player games are the best, you could play it as long as you like, no need to worry about the servers being closed or other nonsense.

This is why I don't invest in mobile games. You would waste money and time with it and then it'll get shutdown anyways regardless of how popular or successful it has become. I will never support mobile or even embrace it, the mobile platform is garbage and any games on there are garbage. They won't be considered garbage if they stopped appearing on that trash can of a device.

NOOO!!! Not before the Holiday event repeats… that was my favorite banner 😭

This is the one mobile game I regret never spending money on. It's generosity actually made me feel bad as a F2P player. Fully voiced text in Japanese, combat, characters, and music were all impressive. First and probably only mobile game I've never considered a cash grab.

Unfortunately it suffered from a kinda bad reputation in Japan due to some controversy from the old first director and with both Cygames and Nintendo getting bigger revenues from other mobile games with way less effort this was just it's destiny.

I really hope it gets revived in the future as a console entry. The fan base is tied up there with Okami at the top for me, they really deserve better than to see this content hit the dust forever.

So much potential to turn the IP into a 3D action RPG Genshin / Granblue Fantasy ReLink kind of franchise.

Why they never did that over these four years still puzzles me.

Would three months be enough time to play through this?

I started this game some months ago and really i liked, it's pity this decision, but, it isn't the first time that great games are closed very soon (Sailor Moon drops in 2 years of life...)
Really i will miss some characters from this game... u.u,

@Mince Yes. You can get through a good chunk of the story in a week. You may miss out on some seasonal events, but they’ve been rotating through those for the past couple years on a regular basis.

@Sun_wukong The game had 4 million downloads, but averaged $41.75 per user. By comparison, Fire Emblem averages $54.61, Mario Kart $1.20, and AC $4.24. I’m sure one of the contributing factors to the closure is the licensed music, but it makes more per user than most of Nintendo’s offerings.

Played this when it first came out and I enjoyed it for the first couple months. Too bad I can’t go back to it on my own time.

Hopefully they don’t shut down Pikmin Bloom. Even without updates, there’s still a lot of stuff to collect that could last me years. Super Mario Run is another mobile game that I would like to complete again down the road. Such a good game.

I feel only kind of bad for the people who pumped money into this game. In a few more months you'll have nothing to show for it, they're completely taking the game away from you and every cent you spent is vanishing into the digital ether.

@shining_nexus mostly quit playing Pikmin Bloom, but it’s fun to pull out every now and then. If nothing else it keeps me moving. I am not one to pay for extras, but with this behavior, I will definitely not put $$$$ into it.

Not that I care too much, but along the same lines, I hope they keep Mario Run active too. It’s not a bad diversion when at the doctor’s office or something like that

@Thief the thing was it wasn’t that successful. Game failed to capture long term dolphins/whales unlike other Gacha for how they went about things. The revenue rankings posted previously made that obvious.

@Sun_wukong This. Nintendo would not have ended the game if it was actually a successful Gacha. How come FeH didn’t get pulled down yet if it was just randomly decided?

@Serpenterror I mean you can literally say that about any MMORPG game too. “One day” it will shutdown including popular games like FFXIV so why bother playing those games then with that logic.

Even applies to any console game with online. Their servers will get shutdown too eventually so why bother playing those games? Or any console for that matter where their online store gets shutdown so why bother those consoles?

Point is does it really matter if said service has been around for several years and you likely got your money worth of entertainment in that timeframe. I doubt the people that played FGO since day 1 have not got their entertainment worth after several years

It was a good game, I played it for just over a year and enjoyed it but it got too busy with way too much events and banners going on at the same time. Basically spoiled it for me. The gacha was pretty generous compared to other mobile games.

It would make a great Switch RPG with some tweaks if Cygames go down that road. They’ve already done it with other mobile titles like Little Noah and Shadowverse so they have form. I don’t see them leaving this IP in the dust as a whole world and characters were created. Possibly the reason it’s getting shut down completely so fast.

Never played it but this sucks for fans of the game. Few things are more crushing than having a game you enjoy and have invested substantial time into get zapped from existence and left inaccessible. I remember when Miitomo got axed, granted it wasn’t much of a game in the traditional sense but it was still something I enjoyed and was fond of.

@ATaco It’s like an arcade. You pump money in until you can’t anymore. I’m disappointed, but I knew this day would come. I stopped buying stuff a couple years ago when the difficulty curve started really ramping up during the events and I realized I’d never be top tier unless I whaled it. I probably sunk about $60 into it. Don’t regret it, but I’ll miss it.

Nintendo: "Thank you for the thousands you sunk into our Gacha we barely worked on, now ***** you, we're taking your account down with hundreds/thousands with our shutdown"

@SakuraHaruka Same here with Sailor Moon Drops!!! I miss that game every day... I really wish they made an offline version of it, it was so adorable and fun!

This is why I never play server-based mobile games. Eventually, they'll have to shut down, all the data is gone. Meanwhile, my PS1 memory card still has my FFVII save data, someday Emerald Weapon will die by my blade!

@rockodoodle I walk a lot so Pikmin Bloom has been a fun way for me to feel like I’m making progress in a game. It also helps that I have a group to play with. Super Mario Run was so fun for me, I remember binge playing it and getting all the colored coins in a couple days. It’s something I would like to go back to some day, just like other older Mario games.

I put some money into Miitomo back in the day and was disappointed they closed down the servers. I did have my fun with it, but still feels like a waste of money since I probably would have not spent anything if I knew it would have shut down so early.

I did spend in Bloom for the record.

@Wilforce cheers think I’ll start it this week sometime.