Besides the large MMORPGs on Steam, there are also many small niche games. One of them is Riders of Icarus, which even lets you earn money while playing it. Soon, however, you will lose that job.
What kind of MMORPG is this? Riders of Icarus is a Free2Play MMORPG that has been available on Steam since 2016 and relies on an elaborate mount system. There are hundreds of ground and flying mounts in Riders of Icarus. The development of the game, on the other hand, was marked by turbulence:
- The MMORPG was in an open beta for a year and at its peak reached 6000 concurrent players.
- In 2017, Riders of Icarus was then released on Steam, and the player base grew to as many as 17,000 (via SteamDB).
- Then the MMORPG fell into a sort of coma: From 2017 to 2018, there was hardly any new content, and many players completely lost sight of the game.
Only in 2019, when the publisher Valofe Global took over development from Nexon, did things start to improve slightly. In collaboration with WeMade, the developers attempted to shift the MMORPG to a play-to-earn model in 2022 (via mmorpg.com).
In play-to-earn games, players can earn cryptocurrency and convert it into real money. However, this monetization strategy also seems to have failed. Now, the end is near.
Do you actually know why your loot has the well-known colors?
Players Lose Their Source of Income
What is happening to the MMORPG? Just recently, the developers of Riders of Icarus wanted to merge the game servers so that only one server for Europe and one for North America would remain. However, these plans were abruptly canceled (via vfun-lounge.valofe.com), with the justification of providing players “[…] a stable and enjoyable gaming environment […]”.
This did not exactly excite fans, considering the comments. The real reasons for the cancellation of the server merge are probably different. As the developers now announce on Steam, the MMORPG will shut down all servers in the West on May 15, 2025. Already in 2024, the servers for the MMORPG in Southeast Asia were shut down.
At its peak, only about 60 players were active concurrently on Steam (via SteamDB). For them, the end of the MMORPG also means the loss of their source of income – they will become unemployed. Their accumulated cryptocurrency will likely remain with them.
Even though Riders of Icarus has not been popular among gamers for years, there were some players who loved the MMORPG in its heyday. One of them even spent almost 8,000 hours in the MMORPG and then left a negative review on Steam: Player spends 7900 hours in Free2Play MMORPG, writes devastating Steam review
