Sony has officially announced that the free-to-play sandbox MMORPG The Tomorrow Children will shut down on November 1 of this year at 17pm Japan Time, according to an announcement on the Japanese PlayStation website.
Here is the announcement on the end of The Tomorrow Children, which can also be found here:
“We would like to thank you all for playing The Tomorrow Children up until now.
This message is to announce that we will be ending online services for The Tomorrow Children at 17pm of the 1st of November 2017 (Tue). The Tomorrow Children development and operations team would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for taking part and enjoying our title since the service began in September 2016.
Please see below for the schedule planned up until the end of service. We want to apologise to all of our users who still continue to enjoy this title and ask for your understanding with the decision to end the service.”
Before The Tomorrow Children officially shuts down, the Founders Pack and Freeman Dollars will be removed from the game on September 28 in Japan along with access to any DLC or special items available for the game. The in-game black market will still be available to use even after the removal of these items from the game.
The English version of The Tomorrow Children will remove the Frontier Pack (which is currently available for $19.99 at the PlayStation Store), Freeman Dollars and access to any DLC or special items available for the game on August 31, according to the official PlayStation Store website.
“There is only a short amount of time remaining, however The Tomorrow Children development and operations team hope that you can all continue to enjoy our title until the end of service. And we would like to extend our thanks and best wishes to you all who continue to enjoy and play our game,” said The Tomorrow Children Development and Operation Team in a closing statement.
The Tomorrow Children was developed by SIE Japan Studio and Q-Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was originally announced at Gamescom as a PlayStation 4 exclusive title in 2014, according to an official PlayStation blog post.
A beta version for the game ran from June 3 to June 6 of last year, according to an official PlayStation Europe blog post. The Tomorrow Children was released as an early access game in September of last year, two years after the Gamescom announcement.
Based off of the Communist and Marxist ideals of the Soviet Union in the 1960s, the player is a “projection clone” whose goal is to rebuild the human race after a failed Russian experiment that destroyed Earth. Many people have compared the game to Minecraft, with the ability to build weapons, buildings, etc. to defend against enemies called the Izverg.
“Anyway, this is just the beginning of all the crazy things you will discover in The Tomorrow Children and I hope you’ll be able to join us when we go live. Now go catch that bus, it’s waiting to take you to work in the mines,” said Q-Games president and executive producer Dylan Cuthbert in the official PlayStation blog post that announced The Tomorrow Children.
Players will still have access to the game until it officially shuts down on November 1. No official word as to why The Tomorrow Children will be shut down, since it was only in early access. It’s sad to see a game with great potential shut down, and The Tomorrow Children definitely did something different by creating a Marxist version of a sandbox game.
Featured image via the official PlayStation US blog.
