Magic: Legends Shutting Down In October, Cryptic Employees Laid Off Following Announcement
Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios has decided to pull the plug on Magic: Legends just a few months after the Magic: The Gathering-inspired ARPG launched into open beta in March. Executive Producer Steve Ricossa broke the unfortunate news to the game’s community on the official site earlier this week:
“It is with heavy hearts that we announce Magic: Legends will be shutting down on October 31, 2021,” announced Ricossa. “Our vision for Magic: Legends missed the mark, but we are proud of what we achieved. Thanks to Wizards of the Coast, we got to bring the expansive Magic: The Gathering Multiverse to a wide audience and explore new angles within the established ARPG genre. We learned several valuable lessons along the way, and we will use them to improve Cryptic’s future development efforts.”
The Zen Shop has been closed as of the announcement and full refunds will be given to all players who spent money on microtransactions during the game’s short stint in open beta. All Zen Shop items will also be purchasable using free in-game currency starting later this week.
“Yes there will be 100% refunds for all purchases, including both the Planeswalker Bundle and all Virtual Currency denominations. For purchases made through Arc Games using credit cards, refunds will be applied automatically to the respective credit card – we expect processing time of these refunds to take approximately 4 weeks. For purchases made through Arc Games using prepaid cards, refunds will be applied automatically in the form of Arc credit to the respective Arc account – plus an additional $10 credit – which can then be used within other games on the Arc client – we expect processing time of these refunds to take approximately 4 weeks. For purchases made through the Epic Games Store, refunds will be applied automatically via the pay gateway that was used to make purchases.”
At least 44 Cryptic Studios employees were laid off following the decision to shut down the game, confirmed one of the affected employees. “Cryptic Studios has decided to cancel Magic Legends for poor financial performance, which sadly means I am without a job,” tweeted Senior Sound Designer Aaron Walz. “They laid off 44 employees this morning.”
“I enjoyed making the sound for this game and am very sad,” he added. “The rest of the audio dept is safe because they don’t work on Magic. I was in charge of Magic and on that team, so sadly, my position was eliminated. I do have to say, Cryptic handled it very professionally and caringly – as much as possible, anyway. Our CEO was extremely emotional and choked up.”
Perfect World and Cryptic first announced Magic: Legends in 2017 as a free-to-play next-generation action MMORPG. In January 2020, the team revealed that the game will instead be a Diablo-like multiplayer ARPG much to the dismay of fans expecting a full-fledged Magic: The Gathering MMORPG. Add to that the monetization problems and lukewarm reception from the community and it’s easy to see how the developers came to their decision just three months into the game’s open beta soft launch.
Our sympathies go out to all employees affected by the layoffs.
