Square Enix Just Shut Down Popular Mana Game
Square Enix officially shut down their popular mobile game, Echoes of Mana, on May 15.
Just months after shutting down its Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier, the now-controversial Square Enix decided to pull the plug on yet another video game. This time, the company is pulling a plug on Echoes of Mana, a mobile entry in the popular Mana gaming series—the official support ended on May 15, 2023, making the game inaccessible for players.
According to ComicBook.com, Square Enix announced the game’s official shutdown on May 15, though the plans for a shutdown were made public in February this year. The company expressed its gratitude to all players who joined in on the adventure. They haven’t offered any official reasons as to why Echoes of Mana was shut down.
They only linked to their original post regarding the end of service. So, the Echoes of Mana ended with a whimper, and only after a few years on the market. Such is the fate of live service games, and it makes the fans unhappy.
There’s a lot of disappointment surrounding the end of service for Echoes of Mana, but many fans actually expressed their gratitude to Square Enix for giving the game’s narrative a satisfying conclusion. Giving Echoes of Mana a satisfying conclusion is already more than most mobile games, and their fans can hope for these days. Still, despite being disheartened by the game’s shutdown, most of the fandom actually praised the various aspects of the game instead of expressing their frustration—well, at least it fared better than Marvel’s Avengers.
Of course, skeptics also raised their voices, stating that Echoes of Mana is among the few games in the series that haven’t been ported to other platforms, so this shutdown actually means that the game is likely to be lost to time for those who’d like to experience it. With that said, the Mana series also isn’t a stranger to remakes and re-releases, and given Square Enix’s money-grabbing tactics—with which they actually managed to “out-greed” Electronic Arts—bringing Echoes of Mana back from the video game cemetery isn’t so far-fetched.
The company that gave us Echoes of Mana, Final Fantasy, and Kingdom Hearts made a series of questionable decisions, which resulted in some abhorrent gaming titles, such as Marvel’s Avengers or an upcoming NFT video game with over 10,000 microtransactions. The latter will forever remain a testament to the fact that companies can’t just take a mediocre video game, slap a popular brand sticker on it, and expect the fans to love a gaming title that’s essentially ruined by greed.
Echoes of Mana is an entry in the Final Fantasy spin-off gaming series that began with Secret of Mana, released in 1998. That particular series subsequently spawned spin-offs of its own, growing into a full-fledged gaming series that initially launched on Android and iOS platforms. Echoes of Mana was the only one that was released as a free-to-play game supported by microtransactions, which is why it wasn’t ported to other platforms, and the reason for its shutdown might very well lie in poor profitability.
