Developer Motiga has announced that Gigantic, its colourful, free-to-play MOBA-meets-hero-shooter, will shut down on July 31st this year.

The news comes via the official Gigantic blog, which confirmed that the game's most recent update would also be its last. "The journey over these last few years was met with outstanding support from our players", it said, "and we are all very proud of the incredible experience Gigantic is today".

"Discontinuing Gigantic was not an easy decision", the post continued, "The game is a unique and exciting experience that captured many hearts and minds. Unfortunately, it did not resonate with as many players as we'd hoped."

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Despite efforts to identify "viable options to sustain Gigantic" over the past few months, Motiga was "unable to find an impactful solution that would help Gigantic break through in a crowded market". Additionally, "the current state of the game has restricted options for further progress and relevant content updates, and delivering basic features while also fixing long-standing issues was more complicated than expected."

Sadly, Gigantic's closure won't be much of a surprise to anyone that's been following the story of Motiga in recent months. Last November, Chinese free-to-play publisher Perfect World Entertainment, which owns Motiga, laid off the majority of the studio's staff, leaving only what it called a "core team" to work on Gigantic. Perfect World also made the decision to close Torchlight and Hob developer Runic Games at the same time.

With Gigantic and Motiga's fate decided, the developer has outlined what its community can look forward to between now and the game's termination in July. All heroes, it said will be free for everyone, given that Rubies and Hero Packs have been withdrawn from sale. Additionally, "currency will still be rewarded in-game, and any Crowns or Rubies gained by an account will remain available to purchase Shop items at discounted prices."

"Gigantic remains a labor of love to the Motiga and Perfect World teams who worked on the game," the developer concluded, "It pains us to let it go, and we cannot thank everyone enough who saw something special in Gigantic and its vision."

Last week, Fortnite developer Epic Games announced the closure of its own free-to-play MOBA Paragon, citing similar reasons. It said that "after careful consideration, and many difficult internal debates, we feel there isn't a clear path for us to grow Paragon into a MOBA that retains enough players to be sustainable."