FireFall MMO has officially shutdown. Players quit for good, but mobile game in development.

[wpsm_dropcap]O[/wpsm_dropcap]kay, I’m sure a lot of you are thinking, “WTF IS FIREFALL!?”

FireFall was an amazing but underrated MMO game created by Red 5 Studios released on July 29th, 2014.  Unfortunately, 3 years later, FireFall was officially shutdown on July 7th, 2017.  Word of the closure came from a post made on the studio’s official site late last night.

“With heavy hearts, we regret to inform you that after much review and analysis, Red 5 Studios have decided to suspend the Firefall efforts on 7th, July 2017. Thank you for being an important part of the Firefall experience and for your loyalty and dedication to the online community.”

Red 5 says it plans to continue Firefall in a different form, however, as a mobile game.

FireFall faced many problems including a lengthy development process that left the game in beta from 2010 to 2013.  FireFall eventually moved from a paid model to become free-to-play.  The final product was remarkable, but the gameplay was uneven.

FireFall underwent significant changes to its class and progression systems in July 2013.  Server and performance issues caused CEO Mark Kern to issue an apology.  Soon after, lay-offs followed, and eventually, Kern himself was driven out of the company.

The breakup spawned a messy and public feud that persists to this day.

https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/883036729732550656

Talk about a grudge.  Kern has taken the opportunity of Red 5’s distress to promote his own crowdfunding campaign for a 200-plus player online wargame with a goal of $20,000.

After his departure, Red 5 was eventually able to secure significant additional funding and officially launched Firefall in July 2014. But the company continued to have financial woes as the game struggled to find an audience. It missed its payroll on Christmas Day 2015. This time last year there were rumors that the game might have simply winked out of existence overnight, but operations returned to normal that same day.

“Your efforts and loyalty will not go without recognition,” Red 5 told fans in today’s brief post. “Firefall is currently developing a mobile version of the game and all of Firefall’s founders and players will be rewarded greatly in the new game. We will be sure to provide everyone with more updates as we have them.”

More and more games are closing down every month.
We’ll report on them.