After four years of being one of the few Facebook games worth a damn and a fine free-to-play mobile joint, Marvel: Avengers Alliance and its recently-released sequel will be shutting down at the end of this month, because some part of Disney hates fun.
Marvel: Avengers Alliance, which launched on Facebook back in March of 2012 before making the jump to iOS and Android, is a free-to-play turn-based role-playing game featuring Marvel comic book characters. In a sea of Farmville and Candy Crush clones, it came as a breath of fresh air. Though it could be really stingy with the premium heroes, regular comic book related events kept it fresh and fun for its entire run.
Avengers Alliance also marked the debut of a connected Marvel mobile universe, establishing ISO-8 as a rare power-enhancing element that has appeared in everything since.
In March of this year Disney launched Marvel: Avengers Alliance 2, a 3D follow-up to the 2D original.
As of September 30, both will be shut down across all platforms, and four years of player spending and team building will go poof. Disney announced the closures on Facebook and its official help site today.
Today we are announcing the shutdown of Marvel: Avengers Alliance and Marvel: Avengers Alliance 2 on all platforms, including the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Windows Phone Store, and Facebook. Beginning today, we are no longer accepting new purchases or downloads, but the games will be available to play until September 30, 2016.
In a separate article, Disney explains the reasons behind the closures. Note that the hating fun bit is merely implied.
At this time, we are shifting our development focus towards other online and mobile play experiences, and a growing selection of Disney Mobile apps. We deeply appreciate your enthusiasm and loyal support for Marvel: Avengers Alliance and sincerely hope you will continue to enjoy the large variety of online and mobile play experiences Disney offers, and will bring you soon!
Well, fuck that. If a game people have been paying for and playing for over four years can be pulled just like that, I’m with this Facebook commenter:
So you’re shutting it down to focus on other games, why would any of us play any new games you release knowing what you did with this one?
Comments
6 responses to “Disney Shutting Down Both Avengers Alliance Games For Some Damn Reason”
Man, now I’m fearful about Marvel Puzzle Quest which is the one I’ve been playing for almost 3 years now. 🙁 If MMA is not sacred, then nothing is.
Because Disney.
Seriously, Disney is a corporate behemoth, inheriting all the crazy and bizarre decisions that legions of management tend to make. They’ve lost what the company initially strove to create, leached away with every new MBA they add to the ranks.
Demiurge, on the other hand, are still small enough to have heart. Though they’ve been acquired by Sega, they still seem to have some autonomy. Plus, MPQ is very popular and well designed. It makes more than enough to pay the bills. I think it’ll be around for quite a while yet.
I didn’t realise they were closing the sequel too. If that is the case maybe it means they are planning to release a larger Marvel rpg on consoles and don’t want to compete with their own free to play game?
Given that both games are shutting down, presumably they were both developed under the same license from Disney, and they negotiations to extend the license broke down.
Either Disney was asking for more money than the developers could afford, or it signals a larger shift in how they’re handling mobile games. Think of how all the digital downloads of Marvel console games all disappeared a while back, only for a few select ones to return months/years later.
Yeah I’m sure that is right, but Marvel did announce they are taking game development more seriously, the PS4 Spider-Man being the first example. A Marvel triple A rpg seems likely in the future.
And they put in a advert card for alliance 2 in with the Civil War Bluray disk. What a waste of paper.