A 7-Year-Old Castlevania Game Is Officially Being Shut Down
As Belmont's Curse Nears, Another Castlevania Game Is Getting Delisted
The 12-year wait for a mainline Castlevania game ends this October when Belmont’s Curse releases on all major platforms on October 15. However, a spinoff that you could only play in one specific place that helped make that 12-year gap a little more palatable will disappear forever before then.
Grimoire Of Souls To Be Delisted And Shut Down
Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls will be delisted on August 20, and then shut down completely two weeks later on September 3. If you have never played, or even heard of, Grimoire of Souls, that’s because, while it was originally available on iOS and Android when it launched in 2019, it became an Apple Arcade exclusive in 2021 and has stayed that way ever since.
“Since its launch, Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls has continued to be supported by many players. However, we have decided to terminate the service on September 3, 2026,” a statement from Konami reads. How many people continue to play is unclear, but it seems it isn’t enough for the Castlevania studio to think it might be worth trying to keep the game alive in some way.
What Is Grimoire Of Souls?
Grimoire of Souls is kind of like a live service take on the Castlevania formula. No, you’re not competing against 100 other people or working through a battle pass, but it does have online co-op options and PvP elements, hence the game becoming unplayable, potentially forever, when it shuts down next month.
There doesn’t appear to be any plan to simply return Grimoire of Souls from whence it came and put the game back on regular mobile stores. When it made the leap to Apple Arcade, since it’s a paid subscription service, the monetization elements that were originally a part of the game were removed. Perhaps there isn’t a desire for Konami to return to that. The move to put it on Apple Arcade in the first place suggests that it wasn’t making enough money through monetization alone.
It’s not the biggest example, but this is even more evidence that a lot of your favorite games can disappear forever without much notice. Earlier this month, the cloud version of Aliens: Fireteam Elite was shut down, meaning that even if you paid $60 for it, the game is no longer playable. Square Enix has also made the controversial decision to shut down the cloud versions of the Kingdom Hearts games on Switch since native versions will be released on Switch 2 this year. Again, those cloud versions will be unplayable even if you paid for the games.