Tales of Luminaria will shut down on July 19

Bandai Namco has announced the sudden closure of Tales of Luminaria. The mobile game will cease to exist simultaneously worldwide on July 19 in US timezones. This closure will also affect the game's storytelling, as there will be no more new character episodes after the Final Episode set to come with the Ver. 1.6.0 update in late May.

Tales of Luminaria was initially revealed in late August 2021. The mobile game launched worldwide in early November of the same year. Although the global release only had English voiceovers at launch, Bandai Namco eventually added a Japanese voiceover option in late March 2022.

As the mobile game's closure is confirmed for July 19, that means it will last for around 8 months. That is a very short lifespan; even shorter than that of Tales of Crestoria, which had shut down recently on February 6 with a lifespan of around 1.5 years. But unlike Crestoria, Bandai Namco did state a plan to release an offline archive version for existing Luminaria players to reminisce about the characters and the soundtrack.

With the closure of Luminaria, the non-Japan global mobile game scene will once again be devoid of any Tales Of titles. Japan, however, still has Tales of the Rays actively running in the country. Although Bandai Namco shuttered The Rays' global release in May 2018, the Japanese version is still alive since its initial launch in February 2017. Tales of Asteria is also still running in Japan since 2014, though Bandai Namco has still never localized the title outside the country.

The Tales of Luminaria development team has also published a more detailed message on the game's official website. You can also read it after the jump below:

As always, thank you all for playing Tales of Luminaria.

We regret to announce that the service for Tales of Luminaria will be sunset on July 19, 2022 PDT.
As the first completely original mobile title in the "Tales of" series, our sincere intent was to make this game fun and, by taking on various challenges, to bring "Tales of" to a wider audience around the world, not only Japan. Additionally, we have tried our best to make this service playable over a long time, encouraged by the supportive comments and feedback we have received on SNS.

However, we could not do enough, and we sincerely apologize to all those who have supported and played Tales of Luminaria.

■About Future Episodes

Weekly episode distribution will end with this announcement. We apologize for the sudden notice, as you may have been expecting a new announcement of the next episode. We unfortunately will not be able to fully depict the fate of the 21 heroes and must end the episodes in the middle of the story. Even more, some characters will be left without getting an episode 2. We are very sorry for leaving these stories untold.
Even though we could not complete all the storylines for each character, we have been considering whether there is any way to bring closure to their story, even if only slightly. With that thought, we have prepared a special "Episode Final," which takes place right before the anime Tales of Luminaria: The Fateful Crossroad. This episode focuses on why Hugo eventually sided with the Empire. We truly regret not being able to provide full closure to this story, but we hope you will enjoy this "Episode Final."

■Regarding the Archiving of Works

We are considering archiving the costumes, designs, illustrations, etc. of the characters released during the service out of application as a "digital archive," so that players can continue to experience and reminisce about Luminaria's universe and its characters even after the service ends. We are also working on a soundtrack for the in-game background music.

We will reach out again as soon as we have more details.

[...]

Finally, we would like to sincerely thank you for all of your support of Tales of Luminaria.　We apologize again for not living up to your expectations and having to announce that the service will be sunset. Although there is only a short period of time remaining, we hope that you will enjoy this game to the end. Thank you.

- The entire Tales of Luminaria Team