Niantic has scrapped one of its ongoing projects, opting to cancel further development and fully cease operations for Catan: World Explorers.
The location-based take on the popular Catan boardgame will be officially “sunset” on Nov. 18, with Niantic planning to remove the game from all active app stores as of today.
Overall, this means the game will no longer be downloadable in the limited regions it has rolled out to since launching its first beta in July 2020. In-app purchases will also be removed from the shop, although players can still freely spend any currency they have already purchased.
The game was set to turn the world into a Catan gameboard through the use of Niantic’s augmented reality technology, similar to that of Pokémon Go and its other projects. Unfortunately, the developers ran into some challenges and strayed a bit too far from the core concept when trying to turn the game into what they envisioned, and will now focus on celebrating their creation’s final moments with the dedicated beta community it built.
“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,” the World Explorers team said. “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.”
While the app is going to slowly disappear, players who have downloaded the game and still want to enjoy the experience before it shuts down, Niantic will be rolling out increased bonuses and new content heading into World Explorer’s final weeks.
Additionally, players who would like to can transfer any remaining in-game currency to Pokémon Go by contacting Niantic support before Nov. 1.
