Developer First Light Games has officially announced that they are shutting down their mobile game Blast Royale, but that they will also turn it into an open source project before doing so.

Why Is Blast Royale Shutting Down?

According to an official Discord announcement by Blast Royale’s core team member Renny, the studio tried exploring “every path and possibility,” and after doing so ended up deciding to ultimately discontinue development of their top-down battle royale.

Essentially, the company ran out of funds and wasn't able to find any investor or avenue through which they could raise more money to extend their runway. They don’t have the financing needed to continue paying their team for their hard work, and as a result need to stop development and ultimately close down entirely. In an earlier Discord announcement on April 25th, Renny did share that they are facing “some serious financial challenges” as the TGE didn’t help out as much as they hoped, and the existing in-game economy isn’t generating enough revenue to cover development costs.

"We know many of you have been waiting patiently for news, and we didn’t want to keep you in the dark any longer. This game has meant the world to us — and seeing the passion, creativity, and energy from all of you has been the highlight of our journey."

The game will continue to be up and running until June 30th, 2025, when the web3 title will officially shut down. Unlike most online live service games that close down however, Blast Royale won’t just completely vanish away from its community. Instead, before the developers close down the game and its servers, they will actually make their game fully open source on June 1st.

The Benefits of Blast Royale Going Open Source

By having Blast Royale go open source, the mobile title still has a chance to live on even after shutting down. While the game’s operations officially closing down is definitely unfortunate news, becoming an open source project comes with its own benefits, as it opens the game’s code up publicly to its community and anyone interested in bringing the game back to life. This means that anyone will be able to modify and distribute existing code and use it to develop their own version of the game.

The same Discord announcement states that the team will put “no restrictions in place” for this release, so if the blockchain gaming community wants to keep this game alive and develop it into the kind of game they want it to be, the developers are giving full freedom for anyone to do just that. In fact, the Discord announcement goes on to say that even the game’s own team will “support anyone who wants to carry it forward” by providing direct access to “developers, designers, and marketers” for anyone needing help with achieving their vision of this game. Of course, they won’t actively develop anything for the game anymore, but they will do “everything we can to help the community keep the spirit of Blast alive.”

By having Blast Royale go open source instead of just completely shutting down like most other games do, not only could this keep the spirit of Blast alive, but this essentially also keeps the spirit of web3 gaming alive as well. Blockchain gaming should be decentralized and community-driven, and if the core developers are no longer able to continue development of a web3 game, then going open source should always be the way to go. It gives a chance for a game’s community, especially its loyal token and NFT holders, to potentially pick up where the original team stopped and keep the game running for years to come. Of course, it remains to be seen whether that will happen or not, but it’s always a big plus seeing a developer giving the community this option in the first place, and in web3 gaming, this should always be the case.

It’s always saddening to see another game fail to stay afloat, but if you’re going to close down, then you might as well go open source like First Light Games did with Blast Royale, as that is certainly one respectful way to thank the game’s dedicated community for their continued support.

Shutdown Plans

Following the announcement of Blast Royale’s closure, all in-app payments have been officially removed ahead of the planned June 30th shutdown. The team also wants to make sure “everyone gets what they’re owed.” This means that all remaining scheduled $NOOB tokens will be unlocked, and the team will make sure distribution is completed properly. The token itself looks set to stay tradable on Aerodrome. More details are planned to be given soon.

The game’s official Discord server will stay open, so the community will continue to have their own place to hang out in as usual. You can still find and download Blast Royale as a free to play title on Android and iOS via the Play Store and App Store respectively if you want to enjoy some more top-down action and try out a couple of new characters and melee weapons before the game closes down. And hey, if you’re a developer interested in reviving this game or are simply interested in learning how the game was made, then be sure to look forward to June 1st, the day the game should go open source.

This news comes in the same week in which web3 shooter Nyan Heroes shut down despite 1 million players and 250k wishlists. Earlier this year, Deadrop developer Midnight Society shut down after three years, while Gala Games is set to sunset The Walking Dead: Empires by July 2025. Check out our opinion piece on why so many web3 games are shutting down and what new projects can do better.