Niantic’s Catan: World Explorers Is Shutting Down On November 18
Niantic may have struck gold with Ingress and Pokemon Go but it looks like they’ve hit a big bump in the road with their early access game Catan: World Explorers. Due to poor public reception, the studio has announced that they’re pulling the plug on the game and will officially be shutting it down on November 18th. Apparently, walking around to gather resources isn’t as fun as collecting Exotic Matter or catching monsters.
“The team originally set out to build a game that turned the world into a CATAN gameboard. We had a vision for trading, harvesting, and building up the world in seasonal play and resetting the board each month, just like you do for each new game you play at home,” said Niantic.
“But trying to adapt such a well-designed board game to a global, location-based Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game was a tough challenge. We’re so proud of the game we made, however we got a little too complicated and a little too far from the original CATAN game. The work and knowledge that we learned working on this game is not lost and we’re already working hard on more games for the future!” they added.
The game has been removed from both Google Play and the App Store and currency purchases from the cash shop has been disabled. Watch out for in-game events and bonuses in the coming weeks and days leading up to the game’s closure.
More information can be found on the Catan: World Explorers official site.