Five years after its last update, Bethesda’s digital card game The Elder Scrolls: Legends has been withdrawn from sale on Steam and is scheduled to go offline at the end of January.
We called The Elder Scrolls: Legends “a a deep and potentially rewarding alternative to Hearthstone” when it launched in 2017, although it required a bit more work in the graphics department and a larger player base. Despite numerous post-launch improvements that continued to impressthis player count never really materialized and was unable to seriously threaten Hearthstone’s hold on the mainstream CCG crown.
In 2019, Bethesda stopped development game “for the foreseeable future,” which included canceling the expansion’s launch scheduled for this winter. Legends, however, remained available and playable in both online and single-player modes; monthly rewards and in-game events also continued to escalate.
This will all end soon. The Elder Scrolls: Legends is no longer available on the website Coupleand a message appears in the game stating that the servers will be permanently closed on January 30, 2025.
“From now until January 30, 2025, all store items and entries to in-game events will be available for one gold each, so you can enjoy all the content Legends has to offer,” the announcement reads. “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.”
Another game is upon us and, unsurprisingly, the reaction is one of them disappointment. Player numbers for The Elder Scrolls: Legends on Steam haven’t been spectacular – just a few hundred concurrent players over the last few years – but the game is also available on mobile devices, which would mean that number has increased, though certainly not high enough to justify continued activity.
Some players are also upset about losing access to a game they put real money into. Legends was free to play, but committed players were offered in-app purchases so they could spend money – and all that money would be lost when the game went offline.
“We have been keeping the game running as needed through maintenance, but that has been the extent of our role for some time,” Jason Coleman, president of The Elder Scrolls: Legends developer Sparkypants Studios, told PC Gamer. “I don’t really have any insight into the decision-making process. I’m sure many people, including those at ZeniMax, would like it to last forever.
“Regardless of the reasons, it’s sad that the game is no longer available and I definitely feel for the players.”
This year, there was a lot of interest in the issue of games going offline and leaving players to their fate. Inspired by Ubisoft’s decision to discontinue The Crew, the Stop Killing Games campaign was born in April; a few months later, the state of California passed a law requiring retailers to warn consumers that their digital games are perishable candy that could be lost if, for example, servers go down. In October, Steam added a modern disclaimer on this matter, warning customers that they do not actually own any of the games they purchase, but are merely paying for a license to employ them.
