'Magic: Legends' Is Shutting Down After Just 7 Months In Open Beta

After receiving rough reception and controversy over monetization, Cryptic Studios announced that its deck-building online ARPG “Magic: Legends” will be shutting down on Oct. 31, just seven months after the game was made available to the public via open beta.

The announcement was made on the official “Magic: Legends” website through a statement uploaded by the dev team. Executive producer Steve Ricossa posted the announcement with an apology to all of the players and answers to some frequently asked questions.

Players who spent real money for “Magic: Legends” through Arc or the Epic Games Store will receive full refunds for their purchases, and the in-game Zen Shop will no longer be accessible.

All of the items available in the Zen Shop will be purchasable with Aether, the free in-game currency, to compensate for the shop’s closure at a later time.

The developers noted that as of now, they have no plans to revive “Magic: Legends” and the game will remain shelved indefinitely after the scheduled closure date. However, players who are still interested can still try the game out for free if they so choose.

Ricossa said that they “missed the mark” regarding their vision for “Magic: Legends,” possibly referring to the inherent faults in the game’s core design and mechanics.

“Magic: Legends” was criticized for its lackluster content and awkward skill system. The card and deck-building aspects of the game, which were its main selling points, proved to be counter-intuitive. Cards that represented skills and abilities were drawn at random, which incentivized indiscriminate spellcasting and offered no strategic or tactical depth to gameplay.

Other issues such as poor optimization, subpar graphics and greedy monetization eventually destroyed what little remained of the game’s community, but the specific reason as to why “Magic: Legends” got canceled is unknown.

“We learned several valuable lessons along the way, and we will use them to improve Cryptic’s future development efforts,” Ricossa said on the shutdown announcement.

Cryptic Studios is also responsible for the development and maintenance of “Star Trek Online” and “Neverwinter” under ARC Games, which was previously known as Perfect World Entertainment.