The time of a flagship iOS game has come to an end: Publisher ngmoco is shutting down the servers supporting Eliminate, one of the early mobile multiplayer games, and one of the first big free-to-play titles on the platform.
Eliminate has stood as a banner first-person shooter on the iPhone and iPad since their debut, and because of its free-to-play nature, it has found itself on many a notable “best games” list. The title pits four players in a deathmatch scenario similar to what’s available in games such as Halo or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on consoles, and part of what made Eliminate popular for so long was how competent the experience was for an early iOS title.
As TouchArcade reports, however, the time of Eliminate has come to a close. Eliminate has been pulled from the iTunes App Store, and according to an in-game message that players are seeing when they log-in, Eliminate will be going offline permanently on May 25.
The closing down of Eliminate seems to indicate larger, farther-reaching financial problems for ngmoco, TouchArcade notes. The developer seemed to be doing extremely well in the early going of the App Store, but it appears as though the beginning of the end came when ngmoco was acquired by Japanese game maker DeNA to the potential tune of $400 million. At the time, FarmVille maker Zynga was said to have been in the running to purchase ngmoco, as well.
Since then, things have been downhill for ngmoco, as it shut down its Epic War series of games and the servers that went with it, to the dismay of players who were still into the game. Then there wasn’t much news at all about the company for some time, until ngmoco reportedly started laying off employees. It seemed like the company hadn’t been doing much for almost two years, although ngmoco and DeNA had been attempting to expand DeNA’s Mobage social gaming platform into North America.
Now, even though the freemium brand of mobile game is stronger than ever and continuing to grow not only on iOS, but all over the video game industry, ngmoco is shuttering Eliminate. It makes one wonder what the future may hold for the developer, and if there might ever be a return to its former iOS glory.
