Hybrid digital card game and tactics battler Duelyst will shut down its servers forever on February 27th, 2020. Developer Counterplay Games took to Steam to announce the shutdown with a post titled “ Farewell Duelyst ,” saying it was “Saddened” to announce the game’s closure. As Duelyst is online-only, this is effectively the end of the game entirely. Though Counterplay Games is the design studio, Duelyst is published in collaboration with Bandai Namco . Players who recently purchased Diamonds, Duelyst’s in-game currency, can receive a refund.

Praised at release for its unique combination of tactical combat and card-based mechanics, Duelyst was often considered one of the best of the post-Hearthstone crop of digital card games. In Duelyst, players used their cards to summon creatures to a grid battlefield, using unique placement rules to manipulate the tactical situation to their advantage. We called Duelyst “a gorgeous tactics card game [with] significant depth” in our review at release, giving it a strong 84/100, and it consistently placed on lists of the best card games . Duelyst was designed in part by Eric Lang, an incredibly popular designer in the tabletop games space. Duelyst was first released in 2016 after a beta period.

For me, this is yet another grim reminder that you don’t own any game published as a service model, and it can be taken away at any time.