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Magic: Legends will shut down in October before reaching 1.0

The end is already here for Magic: Legends, which won't even make it to an official launch.

Ozzie Mejia

June 29, 2021 1:10 PM

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Some people reading this may have heard the old expression, "Grand opening! Grand closing!" Whethey they heard it from Chris Rock or Jay-Z, it means that something's here today and gone almost immediately. That looks to be the case for MMORPG Magic: Legends, except this game didn't even get an official grand opening. On Tuesday, Cryptic Studios announced that its MMO based on the Magic: The Gathering world will shut down in October without ever leaving beta.

Here's the official note from Magic: Legends Executive Producer Steve Ricossa on the Magic: Legends website:

Hello Planeswalkers,

It is with heavy hearts that we announce Magic: Legends will be shutting down on October 31, 2021. All players who spent money in-game across Arc and the Epic Games Store during the Open Beta will be refunded their full purchase amounts. Servers will remain open for play until closing day, however we will be closing the Zen Shop effective immediately. Later this week, all items will instead be purchasable using Aether, our free in-game currency.

Our vision for Magic: Legends missed the mark, but we are proud of what we achieved. Thanks to Wizards of the Coast, we got to bring the expansive Magic: The Gathering Multiverse to a wide audience and explore new angles within the established ARPG genre. We learned several valuable lessons along the way, and we will use them to improve Cryptic’s future development efforts.

Most importantly, we’d like to thank all of the players who explored the Multiverse with us and provided feedback during the Alpha and Beta testing phases. We couldn’t have gotten this far without you!

The Magic: Legends beta launched exclusively via the Epic Games Store on March 23, 2021. Opinions on the beta varied with our own Bryan Lefler enjoying his brief time with the game. However, many also cited performance issues, a focus on grinding, and pacing issues. Those looked like issues that would potentially be sorted out before launch, but it now looks like launch will never officially happen.

Magic: Legends was first unveiled back at The Game Awards 2019 with Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios taking the helm on the popular Wizards of the Coast license. The aim was to bring the joy of being a Planeswalker to an MMORPG setting, but development struggled with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the game out of its target 2020 release window.

Ricossa states that there are no plans to reinstate Magic: Legends in the future, so it looks like this is indeed the end. Shacknews will monitor this story if anything new develops.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?