It's an sad day for fans of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex First Assault Online (That's probably one of the longest game name's ever) as Nexon announced today that the game will be shutting down on December 6th, 2017. The shut down will effect North America, South America, Europe, and the Oceania region. From now until shut down the game will receive continued support and updates, so fans can enjoy the game for a bit longer. While First Assault was never super popular, it did average over 400 players online at any given point, which isn't too far off from where Nexon's newly launched Lawbreakers is sitting at.

I've played my fair share of First Assault (12 hours) and while I loved the sci-fi theme and the Ghost in the Shell setting, the core gameplay mechanics always felt kind of janky to me. The character abilities and varying stats were neat, but aiming never felt right. Many core players blamed Nexon for pushing the 2.0 update which they argued had ruined the game. While it's always sad to see a game shut down, as my mother always said there are plenty of other free to play Korean lobby based shooters in the sea. Black Squad seems to be doing incredibly well with over 6,000 concurrent players online at any given time.