Every Game That's Died In 2023 So Far

Gaming doesn't just get competitive in battle royale arenas and multiplayer lobbies. The games themselves are constantly vying for players behind the scenes, trying to draw in enough dedicated fans to keep themselves going month after month. Not every game makes it. Every year, dozens of games are shut down forever.

2023 promises to be full of games that will blow you away, but it's already proven to be a particularly brutal year for games that have struggled to keep themselves afloat prior to the start of the year. Shutdowns have hit a number of classic games that just happen to be past their prime, but newer titles haven't exactly managed to escape the fray unscathed. Some of the most shocking sunsets of the year have fallen on games that are barely out of their infancy — ones that might have broken through if they'd only managed to stay online a little longer. More games will surely fall, but now is as good a time as any to remember every game that's died so far in 2023.

A team of four Sentinels plans to climb a seemingly endless tower whose floors are flooded with enemies. Luckily, every squad member is armed to the teeth, and thanks to the support of an implant called the Gideon's Coffin, everyone has four weapons that can help shred through their opponents. They crawl upwards floor after floor, fighting, looting, and leveling along the way.

"Babylon's Fall" aimed to give gamers a cooperative action RPG with endlessly engaging combat. Instead, it completely bombed and dropped the ball on almost every level. Lackluster gameplay, terrible graphics, and an overpriced battle pass all added up to a colossal failure. Setting aside the game's many flaws, "Babylon's Fall" also released just a week after "Elden Ring," so it was doomed no matter what. In September 2022, just seven months after the game's launch, the production team announced that "Babylon's Fall" would be shutting down at the end of February 2023.

"Crimesight" is a classic whodunnit through and through, but the game's slight twist is that players are attempting to solve a crime that's yet to be committed. Six characters are brought together in a manor, but one among them is a killer and another is a doomed victim. The game is geared toward online play and even encourages people from different countries to cooperate by communicating through in-game stickers when language barriers would otherwise threaten the group's mystery-solving abilities.

What could have been a great party game will likely end up forgotten forever. Konami announced on Steam that support for the game would be ending on May 1, 2023, though it continued selling copies of the game through February. "Crimesight" only launched in April 2022, so the game's players were caught off guard by the announcement, and Konami didn't list any specific reasons for shutting it down. Maybe that's the last mystery the game has to offer.

"Dragon Quest" has been around for decades, and it's one of Square Enix's most beloved RPG franchises. "The Adventure of Dai: A Hero's Bonds" came to Android and iOS in September 2021 as a free-to-play game that offered a low-stakes way for new players to check out the series and gave longtime fans a new way to enjoy "Dragon Quest." Rather than relying on the traditional JRPG combat formula, "A Hero's Bonds" lets players hack, slash, and magic blast their way through waves of enemies while exploring various dungeons in a party of four.

Thanks to the strength of the existing franchise, genuinely entertaining battles, and a set of microtransactions that weren't entirely overwhelming, "A Hero's Bonds" enjoyed a healthy lifespan. Players were treated to regular updates and an expanding story, which made Square Enix's sudden announcement about the end of the game all the more surprising. On January 25 the company stopped selling content in the game ahead of shutting the whole thing down on April 26. Square Enix promised to deliver the final chapters in two different in-game storylines to give players some sense of closure, but it gave only vague reasons for ending the game in the first place.

The mobile versions of "Apex Legends" and "Battlefield" are far from the only games that EA is putting an end to in 2023. The company released an update addressing its decision to shut down online services for dozens of other titles at the beginning of the year. It said that many of the games had dropped below 1% of peak player levels, and at that point the cost of keeping the games online became too much.

Most of the games that EA is sunsetting throughout 2023 have been around for a long time and have more than enjoyed their time in the sun. Dozens of sports games, from "Madden" titles to "Nascar" entries, will be going offline at some point in the year. Shooters like "Crysis 2" will also see their servers closed, along with games that have only limited online options like "Mirror's Edge" and "Dragon Age Origins." While it's sad to see so many games go dark, it's also a startling reminder of just how many titles EA publishes.

"Final Fantasy" meets "Fortnite" doesn't sound like a surefire elevator pitch, but that didn't stop Square Enix from giving it a go anyway. In 2022 the company released a game that could capitalize on the popularity of battle royales, the ubiquity of smartphones, and the gaming world's endless passion for a certain Buster Sword wielding protagonist. That Frankenstein concept became "Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier," and it almost worked.

The game's core concept turned out to be pretty fun, but its main issue was something Square Enix probably should have seen coming. Battle royales just don't translate particularly well to iOS and Android. The game suffered from a messy control scheme, and plenty of devices struggled to get it to run properly in the first place. "The First Soldier" definitely deserves some credit for trying something new, but that wasn't enough to keep the game alive. Square Enix made the end of service announcement on Twitter, and the servers shut down on January 11, 2023.

In the center of a Venn diagram of autobattlers, card drafting, and competitive multiplayer sits "Hellfire Tactics." Players choose from dozens of different combat units to put together a (hopefully) unstoppable team before heading into battle against their friends in 8-player online match ups. The combatants on offer include demons, hunters, magic users, and a wide array of fantasy creatures.

Among a crowded field of tactics-focused indie games, "Hellfire Tactics" really stands out, but that just makes the game's short lifespan all the more tragic. It launched in November 2022, and despite a promising start, it quickly lost too many players to keep going. On January 21, 2023 developer JWaffle Games made the sad announcement that "Hellfire Tactics" would be putting all future battles to rest on February 28. According to the developer, running the game's servers became too expensive with the size of its player base, and in the future JWaffle Games will be looking at projects that avoid that one big expense.

"Rumbleverse" wanted to take the battle royale genre and put it in a choke hold. The game shook up the traditional formula by making melee combat the center of attention and wrapping the game in enough bright colors to put a group of luchadores to shame. Developer Iron Galaxy Studios really gave the game its all, and with the support of EA as a publisher, it seemed like the brawling action of "Rumbleverse" could entice enough players to keep the game alive.

It didn't pan out that way. Less than six months after launch, EA shuttered "Rumbleverse," much to the disappointment of gamers who'd long ago burned themselves out on "Fortnite." The game lasted only two seasons before sunsetting on February 28, 2023. As a small consolation, any players who spent money in the game became eligible for refunds, which makes sense with how quick the turnaround came for "Rumbleverse." Iron Galaxy isn't out for the count, though, and with any luck the company's next game will hang around a little longer.

"Angry Birds" is a classic that set the standards for mobile titles when it first released in 2009. The deceptively simple catapult game has players launch birds with various special abilities at entrenched pigs. It has hooked millions of players and spawned an entire franchise. Sequels and spin-offs have debuted and "Angry Birds" has managed to take itself well beyond smartphones. The IP boasts two feature-length films and an entire theme park dedicated to it.

"Angry Birds" developer Rovio shared its plans to take the original game down, at least for those who don't already own it, via Twitter. On February 23 Rovio removed the title from the Google Play Store. It also highlighted its intention to shift the name from "Angry Birds" to "Red's First Flight" in the App Store. According to Rovio, the original "Angry Birds" negatively affected new games that the company wanted to promote.

A similar situation actually unfolded a few years prior. Rovio tried to get rid of "Angry Birds" back in 2019, and for two years the game was unavailable. In 2021 the company published a letter apologizing for not supporting its older releases, and "Angry Birds" came back a year later. It's hard to say if this time Rovio will stick to its guns and keep the game out of circulation.