One of the oldest ongoing JRPG series adds its divisive gacha spinoff to the live service graveyard after barely a year

After almost 28 years, the Atelier crafting JRPGs have officially been around long enough to experience a modern gaming mainstay: releasing and quickly canceling a controversial free-to-play spinoff. The global version of Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator, a mobile and PC gacha game, will shut down on March 28, 2025, just over a year after its January 2024 launch. The Japanese version which launched in 2023 will seemingly continue operations.

Developer Koei Tecmo announced the impending shutdown today. On January 27, in-game purchases will be suspended, leaving players two months to spend their existing Lodestar Gems before they're buried in the rapidly expanding live service graveyard.

"To all our players who have been with us on this adventure, we sincerely thank you for your support, and we hope you enjoyed this journey as much as we did," the announcement reads. "Although service will end on March 28th, we have some events lined up for you to enjoy until the very end."

Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator was the first mainline mobile installment in the series. It also came to PC, but its sticky monetization and streamlined gameplay proved unpopular with many Atelier veterans, earning it a 55% user score on Steam – handily the lowest of any Atelier game.

Atelier Resleriana has actually reviewed pretty well on mobile – 4.2 stars on Google Play and 4.6 stars on the App Store – but it demonstrably didn't take off. Hardcore fans were divided or outright dispirited from the moment it was announced, and you can call me a prophet because I said in 2023 that "the volatile nature of gacha games also looms ominously over the announcement. Tie-in and spin-off mobile games die in a year or two with concerning regularity, and it's not hard to imagine a game from a niche series like Atelier meeting the same fate even after a shot in the arm from Ryza."

This is not to be confused with Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and the White Guardian, which was announced last year as a full-fat offline RPG set in the same world. The Atelier games, mid-budget icons that they are, historically come in threes. As far as we know, this Atelier Resleriana is still coming to PS5, PS4, Switch, and Steam in 2025.

Away from this whole mess, Atelier Yumia, long positioned as the newest and mainest of new main games in the long-running franchise, is also due this year.