Notorious Studios, the studio that developed and published Eldegarde, has announced that the game’s servers will be shut down on March 31, 2026. The announcement is coming roughly two months after the game launched into version 1.0.
Although the game has a unique charm, it struggled to attract and retain players, which made operating the servers unsustainable. The founder and CEO of the studio, Chris Kaleiki, a former Blizzard veteran, broke the news of the game’s shuttering on Discord. A similar message has also been shared on the Steam Community page.
“It has been a while since we’ve done an MTD or caught up about Eldegarde, mainly because we’ve been figuring out the best next step after the 1.0 release earlier this year,” Kaleiki wrote. “After much reflection, we have made the difficult decision to sunset Eldegarde (a fancy gamedev term to basically mean shutting down).”
“The game will be coming offline March 31st. I have a ton of thoughts and reflections behind the decision to do this, which I’ve put into the post I hope you’ll read on Steam, but above all I wanted to express my gratitude for this community and for our players playing our game. Even though it is unfortunate and sad, I want to celebrate the life the game did have this past year, with the four seasons of content, 28 MTDs we did with you, and, of course, the memories and experiences we created together in the game.”
Eldegarde refund available to limited players
In an update provided by Notorious on the Steam community board, the studio said they have been communicating with Steam to expand the refund eligibility window for recent purchases.
“Under Steam’s standard policy, refunds are typically available within 14 days of purchase and with less than 2 hours of playtime. For players who purchased the game within the past 2 weeks, Steam has agreed to allow refunds regardless of playtime.
If you purchased the game during this timeframe and would like to request a refund, please submit a refund request through Steam’s normal refund process. When submitting your request, please include a note stating that you played more than 2 hours but purchased the game within the last 2 weeks, and that the developers have confirmed refunds are allowed for these purchases.”
According to the developer, “Eldegarde was an incredibly ambitious game for a new, small startup studio”. It featured a unique combat system that blended action RPG with MMO-like classes and spells, a session-based extraction mode that offered both PvPvE and PvE experiences, and deep, rich systems that the developer believes rival even mainline MMOs.
The game’s recent reviews on Steam have been mixed. Its all-time peak player count was 3,698. At the time of writing, only 30 people were playing.
Do you think Eldegarde is one of the rare gems that was never given a chance to blossom? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
