Back in June, Neowiz announced the sad news that Bless Online’s western version on Steam – the last version left alive – was sunsetting on September 9th. The moment of execution has now come and gone.
“Steam service for Bless Online will be ending on September 9th, 2019 at 00:00 PDT,” the team reiterated last weekend. “While things may not have worked out as we had hoped, we have learned a lot from the experience of creating Bless Online and are excited for the future of not only Bless Unleashed but future titles. From everyone here on the Bless Online team, thank you again for your support over the past year and a half.”
MMO players will recall that Neowiz shut down its Korean servers last fall to focus dev resources on the Steam version, which launched in 2018 to lukewarm reception. As of June, it was showing under 500 players, down from 27,000 at launch, making the sunset not much of a surprise, especially when in April, Neowiz’s Bless Studio was merged back into parent company Neowiz. Along with Bandai Namco, Neowiz is currently preparing to launch the reimagining of Bless for Xbox One as Bless Unleashed with an open beta in November.
Our sympathies once again extend to the game’s remaining players.