In 2005, the Korean MMORPG Cabal Online was released. Nearly 10 years later, it made the leap to Steam, even reaching more than 1,400 concurrent players. However, it is now set to be removed from the platform.
Update June 17: As Pedro Carvalho, Product Manager of CABAL Online, has informed us, the game’s servers on Steam have always been in the American region. European servers, on the other hand, have never made it to Steam. According to Carvalho, nothing is changing for us in Europe.
However, he did not provide a specific reason for the departure from Steam, but referred to the official statement on Steam.
What happened? In a message on Steam, the support team of CABAL Online announced that the version will no longer be supported starting with the upcoming update on July 15, 2020.
As a result, the MMORPG will be removed from the platform on July 16. While players are expected to retain their accounts, no reason was given for the discontinuation.
A possible reason could be the low player numbers, but those have actually significantly increased in recent months and were much worse in 2017 and 2018 than they are today.
CABAL Online is being removed despite increased player numbers
How many play CABAL Online on Steam? At the Steam release in February 2016, the then more than 10-year-old MMORPG had an average of 721 players and peaked at 1,428 concurrent players.
Afterwards, the numbers dropped significantly. In October 2016, only 52 players were playing on average and 92 simultaneously at peak times. Until early 2019, CABAL Online mostly remained at a double-digit average.
However, in 2019, it remained in the triple digits, with one exception in February. In 2020, some MMORPGs on Steam reached increased player numbers due to the coronavirus. CABAL Online also benefited and reached an average of 260 players in April 2020 and peaked at 394 players. The best value since March 2016!
Why is the MMORPG being removed from Steam? In the short statement, there is no explanation for why the game is being removed from the platform.
One possibility could be the lack of crossplay. According to Steam user Mark F. Smith, there is no way to interact with players from other servers from the Steam version.
We have asked the publisher ESTsoft for a statement on this issue and will update the article accordingly.
Steam characters land on North American servers
What happens next with CABAL Online? According to the statement, the closure has no direct impact on the players. They are to download the client from the official website and continue to have access to their account.
All Steam characters have been added to the Atlas server. However, that can only be accessed from North America.
Moreover, there seem to be issues with missing access credentials. At least that’s what user Omega XTR reported on Steam.
In 2018, the successor CABAL 2 was completely discontinued. It was action-packed and aimed to attract new players. However, that apparently didn’t work: the developers admitted it didn’t meet the players’ tastes. CABAL Online, on the other hand, will continue for now even without the Steam platform.
