Sword fighting VR game Swords of Gargantua will become unavailable to play later this year — existing owners on Quest and PC VR will not be able to access the game after September 30.
Update 09/22: In a tweet published in late August, Thirdverse provided an update stating that the game will come back online in early 2023 after “online server relocation and additional technical modifications.” There’s also plans to support an offline mode “in the future.”
Developer Thirdverse announced the news on the Swords of Gargantua Twitter account, describing it as a “service termination.” The explanation thanked players for “continued support and patronage” but explained that Thirsdverse will “discontinue its service” on all platforms from September 30, 2022. “After this date, you will no longer be able to play the game and use its online features.”
“Our player community is incredibly important to us and we take pride in listening to our community’s feedback,” Swords of Gargantua Producer Masaru Ohnogi wrote in a prepared statement to UploadVR. “We were disappointed to have to make this decision in sunsetting Swords of Gargantua, which was due to both technical and organizational factors impacting the ongoing operations of the game. Given that Swords of Gargantua is entirely an online game, this does impact player ability to engage in the title once we take the game offline on September 30.”
Given “significant interest from players in an offline mode” Thirdverse adds “we are exploring options for offline play in the future and will keep fans apprised of those plans.” The studio points to Meta and Steam refund policies for those affected.
The initial notice from Swords of Gargantua suggested sales of the game would stop at the end of August, but follow up tweets said it would be pulled from sale the same day, July 29.
Swords of Gargantua is a largely online multiplayer focused game, however, it does have a single player solo mode. Nonetheless, Thirdverse says the solo game mode “still works on online servers” and hence will also be unavailable after September. The studio is planning a follow up sword-fighting title called Altair Breaker to release this summer.
Recently, developers BigBox VR announced it would drop Quest 1 support for Population: One in October, citing ambitious plans for future content that requires the extra performance of Quest 2. The Swords of Gargantua termination isn’t a change of supported platforms — the game will simply be inaccessible for all headsets after September. BigBox says Quest 1 owners will only be eligible for a refund if they do not own a Quest 2 headset and bought the game within the last 6 months.
