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COLOPL NI winds up development on JRPG Rune Story after just one year

A hit in Japan, not so in the west

COLOPL NI winds up development on JRPG Rune Story after just one year

Free-to-play Japanese role-playing game Rune Story has been removed from the App Store and Google Play and will no longer be updated.

Rune Story was a localised version of the massive Japanese hit White Cat Project, handled by COLOPL NI - the US arm of Japanese publisher COLOPL.

Back in March 2016, COLOPL NI CEO Jikhan Jung admitted to PocketGamer.biz that the firm had struggled to scale the business in its new market.

“The players like [our games], but at the same time it's hard to gather players in a very competitive market with very expensive marketing costs,” he said at the time.

“We are not sure whether we can scale up right now. We try to maintain our fanbase by adding events and so on, but we are not looking at a high rate of growth right now.”

A numbers game

And indeed, that failure to create a strong player base seems to be the reason for the game's closure eight months down the line.

"As of today [October 7th], Rune Story will be removed from the iTunes and Google Play stores, and the jewel stores in both games will be disabled," reads the official statement on the COLOPL forums.

"We will be updating you shortly with more details, but in the meanwhile the servers will be active. We deeply regret that we will not be able to release Nightmare mode or update the client any further. However, if there are quests or heroes you would like to see again, we will do our best to accommodate those requests.

"Thank you again for your long-time patience and support. Our community was small, but dedicated, funny, creative, and always demanded the best of us. We hope you will remember fondly the good times you had and the friendships you made in Astora."

COLOPL NI's only other release, the competitive city builder hybrid Downtown Showdown, remains live on both the App Store and Google Play.

PocketGamer.biz has reached out to COLOPL NI for comment, and will update accordingly with any response.


Features Editor

Matt is really bad at playing games, but hopefully a little better at writing about them. He's Features Editor for PocketGamer.biz, and has also written for lesser publications such as IGN, VICE, and Paste Magazine.