Having "Missed The Mark", Magic: Legends Announces Closure Just 3 Months After Open Beta Started

By Michael Byrne, Editor-in-Chief June 29, 2021

If it seems like it hasn't been that long since Magic: Legends became playable, you're right. The free-to-play ARPG went into open beta just a mere 3 months ago. Being that young hasn't stopped the bad news coming out of the team at Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment, though. In a post on the official site, the Magic: Legends team announced that the game will be shutting down the cash shop effective immediately in preparation for the entire game to go offline on October 31st. That means the game will have been open for just 7 months upon shutdown, and never made it to an official launch.

In the statement, Executive Producer Steve Ricossa says that the team's "vision for Magic: Legends missed the mark." He goes on to thank the team, expresses pride in what they did accomplish, and thanks Wizards of the Coast. Ricossa hopes to take lessons learned from the game's development to improve development in other Cryptic Studios projects.

If you spent any cash on the title, don't worry. ANY purchase made in the Zen store (on PWE's Arc launcher or the Epic Games Store) will have their entire purchase prices refunded. The in-game store will convert over to Aether as the primary currency so you can buy anything you want using the free in-game currency going forward.

This does mean that there will be no console launch for the game and as for the future...well, that remains a possibility, but probably not a big one as the FAQ states that "at this time there are no plans to reinstate Magic: Legends in the future."

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In this article: Cryptic Studios, Perfect World Entertainment, Magic: Legends.

About the Author

Michael Byrne, Editor-in-Chief
Mike “Magicman” Byrne has been a part of the MMOBomb family for years and serves as the site’s current Editor-in-Chief. His love for MMOs and gaming in general has led him to covering games for numerous websites including Gamebreaker TV and XIV Nation where he proudly displays his fanboy flag for FFXIV:ARR.

Mouhsine rahali 1 year ago

i think what killed the game are the bad performances and low fps even in high end machines...if a player can't play an mmo he love in his powefull pc with 60fps+ and with max grafics then he will stop playing and paying....and very few will continue to play with low fps of cours...

Dumbledalf 1 year ago

The game wasn't fun at all. Even if it wasn't an MMORPG but just an online ARPG like Path of Exile, it still wasn't fun.

- the controls were bad, especially mouse movement
- optimization was bad even on lowest
- graphics and visuals looked boring and ugly
- free camera rotation made navigating very confusing
- playable classes were very limited and not exciting
- combat with abilities that come and go on random is not fun at all - you are left at the mercy of RNG

I'm not surprised this is happening, no wonder Cryptic also plans to kill Neverwinter with the upcoming update with level cap reduced to 20 and most of the game zones removed from the game, instead of making it better, they are making the game worse.

Rsjabber 1 year ago

Wasn't this game first announced as MMO? What a wasted opportunity, I feel bad for the Magic fans

putler terrorism kaput 1 year ago

Game was not ready for open beta, so much bugs, very bad performance even on high end PCs, countless bug reports and tiny fixes once in week or two weeks, game have great potential but cryptic failed, every previouse games from them i dont like, so much issues, they should change team in every previous games super bad skills management in games and very bad interface UI.

Guza 1 year ago

This is what you get for not listening to players feedback thinking you know whats best for your game. Open beta launched with more or less same client that we had in alpha. Even though a lot of alpha players complained and posted feedback they did nothing about it.
This is the new Cryptic, its full of amateurs that think they know whats best, its the same thing with Neverwinter too.