On January 30, 2025, the servers for The Elder Scrolls: Legends went offline. The well-known competitor to Hearthstone had recently received very positive ratings on Steam and had many fans who are now very emotionally saying goodbye to one of their favorite games.
What do I need to know about The Elder Scrolls: Legends? The spinoff of the popular role-playing series from Bethesda was an award-winning, free-to-play card game that aimed to successfully compete with Hearthstone, Magic, and others using the brilliance of the world and lore of Elder Scrolls.
Since the open beta launch in August 2016, anyone interested could take a look or two and happily build decks, challenge other players, or try out the solo campaign. Officially, Legends was released for PC in March 2017. Versions for macOS, iOS, and Android followed in the subsequent months.
Although the game managed to build a fan base thanks to the strong brand, nice ideas, and regular updates, the hoped-for financial success did not materialize. In 2018, there was already a relaunch. Just a year later, it switched to maintenance mode. In November 2024, the announcement followed that on January 30, 2025, the servers will be permanently shut down.
Perhaps Elder Scrolls fans will find a replacement for mobile hours in the Castles spinoff:
How does the community react to the end? That Legends still has a small but passionate fan base is wonderfully illustrated by two numbers: In the past 30 days, the game has achieved an average rating of “Very Positive” on Steam – thanks to 93 percent positive reviews. At the same time, however, there were never more than 286 Steam users active in Legends at the same time during this period.
The passion of the community is also evident in numerous posts where players say goodbye to Legends.
- Laew_Yrsiy writes on Reddit: “It’s been a good 9 years of playing … thousands of games … We may not know each other, but I surely met many of you in-game. Thank you all for being my opponents. Especially to those who stuck it out until the end. See you in Sovngarde …”
- Ysmirs-Beard explains on Reddit: “This hits me hard right now, I’m glad to have shared this game with such a great community.”
- TurningRain also says goodbye on Reddit: “Thanks for all the incredible times we’ve shared together. All the wonders, all the deadly prophecies, even the opened Oblivion gates. Cheers, everyone. May we meet again!”
- Fyreflyre1 is also Reddit visibly emotional: “Five years ago, I discovered a game that, like for many of us, has become a part of my life. […] We were lucky to experience one of the greatest games of all time, and I wish you all the best as we all try to fill the gap that this remarkable piece of software will leave.”
Unlike dying MMORPGs, there’s no virtual capital in a card game like The Elder Scrolls: Legends where the community can jointly experience the last minutes and celebrate their favorite game one last time in-game. Instead, fans were left with only a few final card duels until they were abruptly interrupted by a sobering error message – as this video on YouTube shows.
In stark contrast, players of Blue Protocol were able to lay the failed anime MMORPG from Bandai to rest, as the servers went offline forever on January 18, 2025. You can read more about it here: New MMORPG from the company behind Elden Ring and Tekken was supposed to thrill fans of anime and PvE – now offline forever
