The Elder Scrolls: Legends, a free-to-play card game set in Bethesda’s fantasy world, has been withdrawn from sale on Steam. Its servers will be shut down for good on January 30, 2025, after which it will no longer be playable. The closure comes five years after the game’s last update.
Game Steam page displays a message at the top stating that it is “no longer available on the Steam Store”. An in-game message informs you about the closure.
“On January 30, 2025, The Elder Scrolls: Legends servers will be permanently disabled,” the message begins. “From now until January 30, 2025, all store items and entries to in-game events will be available for 1 gold, so you can enjoy all the content Legends has to offer. On this day, the servers will be turned off and the game will be unavailable. Thank you for playing and we hope you enjoyed your time in Legends.”
Brendy wrote in his Elder Scrolls Legends review that it “improved gradually on Heathstone,” picked up by the rune system and held back by the Elder Scrolls setting. That was in 2017, and the constant work on updates and extensions ended just two years later.
Of course, Legends has never found a huge, dedicated audience, but as always, it infuriates me that live services and free games are just a slippery slope of unpredictable length, straight to the trash bin. No offline mode, no chance of finding an audience in the future, just: bin. It’s a terrible way to treat customers, and a terrible thing for video game culture in general when so much work is so easily wasted. Is any other medium so shortsighted?
