In the highly competitive world of videogame development it’s never easy and even Mojang know when to throw in the towel. Today they announced that their strategy/card game Scrolls is to close.

In a post on the official website they announced that they could “no longer sustain continuous development. The update reads:

“After much deliberation, we’ve come to an important decision that we’d like to share: Echoes will be the last major content patch for Scrolls. We won’t be adding features or sets from now on, though we are planning to keep a close eye on game balance.

“Scrolls will still be available to purchase for the time being, and our servers will run until at least July 1st, 2016. All future proceeds will go towards keeping Scrolls playable for as long as possible.

“The launch of the Scrolls beta was a great success. Tens of thousands of players battled daily, and many of them remain active today. Unfortunately, the game has reached a point where it can no longer sustain continuous development.”

It’s not had much of a run as a full release, the game only launched back in December 2014 so perhaps they overestimated their audience and the numbers have dwindled to such a level that it’s just not worth the effort.

Although there will be no new content releases, Mojang will still be selling and supporting the game with balance tweaks. They plan to keep the servers online until at least 1 July 2016.

Today’s announcement will likely be the nail in the coffin for the game as players realise there’s not much point in carrying on with no future updates. The lengthy beta test which ran for a whopping 18 months from June 2013 probably didn’t help.