The medieval game Life is Feudal: MMO is officially dead. The survival MMO actually aimed to make a comeback in 2020. However, a legal dispute led to the end of the MMO. Let’s look back.
What happened? In December, the developers from Bitbox announced that their MMO of Life is Feudal would be discontinued on January 18, 2021. That has now happened.
Although the game is still available for download on Steam, nothing happens if you try to start it now. The client just closes again.
What caused the game to fail? The reason for the discontinuation was cited by the developers as a legal dispute with the publisher, which was newly established in 2016 and was supposed to distribute Life is Feudal: MMO. However, this company apparently did a poor job, leading the developers from Bitbox to market themselves. However, there seemed to have still been a contract with the publisher.
After the developers declined a renewed deal with the publisher, he reportedly refused to share their revenues from Life is Feudal.
The financial pressure is said to have led to the shutdown of the game.
What is affected by the discontinuation? Only the MMO version of Life is Feudal is affected by the shutdown. The games Life is Feudal: Your Own and Life is Feudal: Forest Village remain playable.
The Chinese version of Life is Feudal: MMO will also continue. Only Western players can no longer play.
Are there refunds? All purchases made since November 1, including currency for real money or the premium account, have been refunded by the developers via Xsolla.
Life is Feudal was too realistic and demanding for many
What kind of game was it? The MMO Life is Feudal was described by the developers as “difficult and realistic”. You could dive into a medieval world that offered a great challenge and a lot of grind:
- Basically, it was a survival game where you had to search for resources and could build entire cities with other players.
- However, it took an extremely long time to build something up in the game.
- You were constantly exposed to danger from other players and NPC races.
- When you died, you lost everything.
On Steam, the game only had a 43% positive rating. Life is Feudal: MMO was mainly criticized for appealing only to those who had an enormous amount of time, a lot of patience, and wanted to play in large guilds.
Alone, you couldn’t achieve anything in Life is Feudal. At least ten players are needed for a guild, and only in a large guild do you have the chance to build something up very slowly. You also need to be very frustration-resistant, as everything you have built up over months can be lost in a battle or a raid.
That’s why the game could never establish itself with the masses.
Can the game still be experienced? The MMO for Life is Feudal can no longer be played. It was offered as a free-to-play game since 2019.
However, there is still the “Your Own” version. This is a standalone version of the game, where you can host your own servers and play with friends or strangers. However, you need to pay 19.99 Euros for that.
Life is Feudal: Forest Village remains active as well. This is a city-building simulation. You play a group of settlers with whom you build a town. It essentially picks up the building aspect of the MMO, but does not offer a playable character that you control and equip.
Life is Feudal: MMO is the first MMO that died in 2021. However, the deaths of two other online games have already been announced for this year. We have included them in this article:
Rest in peace: These 7 MMOs and online games sadly died in 2020
