Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier to shut down in January

polygon.com:

Hey, you remember that free-to-play Final Fantasy 7 battle royale game that was released back in November of last year? No? Well, Square Enix announced via Twitter on Wednesday that the mobile game would be shutting down on Jan. 11, 2023 at 7 a.m. UTC, citing an inability to deliver “the experience we were hoping to.”

[End of Service Notice] We are regretful to announce that we will be ending service for FINAL FANTASY VII THE FIRST SOLDIER at 07:00 UTC on January 11, 2023. We would like to thank you all for all your support over the past year.https://t.co/XvNOVv2EVs<a href=«https://twitter.com/hashtag/FF7FS?src=hash&ref_src=» https:>#FF7FS

pic.twitter.com/aNVI4iHle4

A mobile battle royale shooter set 18 years before the events of Final Fantasy 7, The First Soldier allows players to assume the role of a Soldier recruit embarking on missions in Shinra’s virtual reality simulator in order to bolster the mega-corporation's private military. The game saw several regular content updates during its lifetime, but this apparently wasn’t enough to keep it afloat.

This is the only the latest shutdown in what appears to be an emerging trend among Square Enix’s live-service games, with the publisher announcing just last month that they would be ceasing the live service for PlatinumGames’ action role-playing game Babylon’s Fall on Feb. 27, 2023, just shy of a year since it first launched.