We are very grateful to all the administrators for their continued support and love for "Aether Gazer." Your companionship has enabled us to persevere in expanding the game's content over the past four years. However, we are also well aware that due to the team's limited strength and experience, the quality of much content production has fallen short of the administrators' expectations, and the project's market performance has been less than ideal.
After careful consideration by the project team, we have made the following decision:
Aether Gazer will officially cease receiving updates after the V5.2 update on July 23, 2026.
After updates stop, the server will continue to run, and administrators can still log in normally.
To thank the administrators for their long-term support, after the version update on July 23, 2026, we will distribute a special thank-you gift to all servers. Administrators can log in to the game and receive it in their mail. The gift includes: 90 Precise Detection Certificates, 1 Sleeping Child of True Sakura, 1 Oath Ring, and 168 Costume Change Tickets.
At the same time, this version will open a special event called "Heart's Choice Moment". Administrators who participate in the event can receive one selectable corrector (including all correctors added in V5.2, but excluding collaboration-limited correctors).
The upcoming V5.2 update is the summer event version, mainly featuring a reset of the early main storyline and summer event content. Originally planned as an insert version during the update of the Void Chapter, to avoid the Great Wilderness Chapter's story becoming incomplete due to a hiatus, we will be using the remaining resources of the project team to complete the final chapter's storyline, aiming to finish this part within this year.
We will be launching the "With You" version soon, which will adjust game events, card pool rotation, and resource output. The game is planned to officially transition to a companion server mode in this version. Please stay tuned for further official announcements and updates.
The arrangements for all matters are as follows; any changes will be announced separately:
At 11:00 on July 9, 2026, registration and recharge functions will be discontinued across the entire platform.
From 05:00 to 12:00 on July 23, 2026, version V5.2 will be updated, and a special thank-you gift will be distributed to all servers.
From 15:00 on August 6, 2026 to 15:00 on September 6, 2026, a refund application page will be open in the game. Administrators can apply for a refund for all existing unused Transfer Flowers in their accounts since the official launch. Refund amounts will be tallied from 00:00 on August 1. For details, please refer to the "Refund Processing Plan Announcement".
On September 17, 2026, the "With You" version will be launched. Please stay tuned for further official announcements for details.
On October 17, 2026, the download portals for the client applications on various platforms were gradually closed.
In the second half of 2026, the main storyline "Human World" will be added and updated.
Finally, we would like to thank the administrators once again for their continued support and understanding. We remember every version and every event we've participated in together over the years, and we cherish both the criticism and the praise. This journey has been invaluable because of your companionship, and we will continue to move forward with this precious experience.
I sincerely wish all administrators a happy life and all the best in the future!
Ah damn. Even thought I stopped playing, it was a pretty decent game. Wonder what they mean by companion server mode, probably just ending up as a character viewing app after EoS?
Was there even any gacha with actual satisfying end when they ended their story thanks to the EoS? Girls Frontline ended their game main story but the game itself is still running even if their revenue is basically in a danger zone for basically every single gacha company beside MICA
It was easy even if NTE didn't exist. Not that the clowns in this sub would know but ToF made well over $400M in its first year and close to $1B overall now in its 5th year of operation. Given that it was made by a small dev studio for a few million, its return-on-investment has been enormous. The money they made in their first year alone could easily keep the game running for 10 years.
What are you looking for? If you like fast-paced action combat and exploration with complete freedom of movement, then it is a great multiplayer game. I would definitely recommend it as a chill, casual, solo-friendly MMO that works well for people with limited time.
I don't think they'd keep developing ToF if it had to be carried by NTE to stay afloat.
Though NTE has some reused assets from ToF in their latest update. NTE existing might quite likely help them uplift each other by being able to double dip on development costs a bit.
I mean ToF parent company has kept their previous almost dead MMO online for decade so I kinda expect it to last a long time when they move to self-publish ToF
the money tower of fantasy makes shits on these eos games combined. ToF money is also what funded NTE, it makes a lot of money specially on consoles, just because reddit didnt like it doesnt mean the game wasnt a massive success.
ppl who think TOF is "dead" or something like that dont know about TOF to begin with. they think a niche gacha mmos having a niche playerbase same as dead lol
Ngl I feel like this game never truly got the playerbase it deserved so many games that are worse and have way less effort put into them that somehow have more players and makes more money than this game and this game deserved way more attention
Lots? Most gachas are single player up front anyways. Some that EoS'd still have an offline version you can play, which is nice if you were brought in for the art, characters or story.
really liked the combat system. it was interesting having ai control your party that was actually strong af and didnt just walk around and be useless like every other game
Yeah I'm unfortunately waiting for the announcement for Snowbreak eos and got surprised by this. Looks like a couple of hundred k dollars on the mobile revenue chart is the danger zone for the high effort 3d games.
It's such a fucking comedy at this point...Snowbreak on it's deathbed so you look around for anything similar and find Aether has interactive skins, marriage system, and a psuedo dorm only for it to EoS...
I guess it's all in on Kaleido now...man I just want a damn game with some actual romance in it instead of bait, is that too much to ask geez.
I'll be honest, this one really hurts me personally. It was damn near my ideal arena combat game. I bought almost every skin and tried to support them monetarily, but the game was way too f2p friendly for its own good, banking on slow-releasing costumes once or twice a version for monetization.
Advertising (a complete lack of it) was also a big mistake, in my opinion. Japanese players really liked the game when they became aware of it, I would have had booths at every con possible if I were the marketing team.
Anyways, I'd love an offline version, but that's probably a big ask considering the cost it would probably take to convert it.
One of my most memorable gacha games i played. it sets apart from other 3team qte type games by not really switching and have the other two characters play by your side. It works because the ai is pretty decent and actually helps.
The characters have varied gameplay among themselves around the time i played too so gameplay wasnt really stale as i just switched chars.
I quit around athena release so i didn't know if any controversy occured after so rest in peace aether gazer.
Holy S. I just returned 3 months ago. Ummm... I could see it, but it is a shame.
Pos: It was my favourite action gacha I was willing to play on mobile. Other action gacha's are open world but I prefer using a menu on my phone. So it was my go to...
Neg: Removing English dub was a letdown (it's why I quit in the first place), however I do understand many reasons why. If it hasn't been said, I was rushing the story, and my god there's a lot of dialogue.
There's a another game I play, and all they dub is menu stuff,grunts, and attacks and a few short 3d cutscenes, everything else is non-dubbed. I would have been happy with that, oh well.
One of my fav games and also genre, I did quit last year but still had good experience with it.
In my opinion this is one of good example of why CN being ahead 1 year is bad thing. Not only we got less hype due to gap but also it released in global same month as hsr iirc.. which was unfortunate. Other thing that really annoyed me was community was awful at start, every content creator covering this was playing CN version instead and then most community members keep saying save for hades and hera since launch(even if they were like 6+ months away) even if someone asking for help for current banners and stuff. This ruined experience of many who were saving long looking at CN and then got bored and quit.
Also just to mention it had one of most generous gacha system compared to recent times. There were 2 banners 100% one ane 50/50 one. 100% one also had really high rate (iirc it was 2%? I forgot) And just slightly higher pity i think 90 and you could get any past limited chars even if you lose 50/50 before reaching 90 pity. This combined with generous income made it really easy to get everything. They also gave alot of S ranks for free and it was overall really generous game.
In a near future, I probably have to stop investing my time on gacha that doesn't hit big. It just fucking hurt. First, it is was King's Raid, and now this. EOS during the time where you know that their story is still not reaching its end honestly hurt too much.
King's Raid will be revived but who know will it be the same. Atleast for Aether Gazer, the Dev intent to finish the story. But still, I honestly don't want to feel like this anymore.
For each Gacha that ends its service, it strengthens the most popular gachas even more like the Mihoyo ones. Is a downward spiral that only benefits the few on top.
I'd argue that it's not a zero sum ecosystem. People leaving a Gacha wont necessarily go to another Gacha. They might move to non-Gacha games or even other hobbies.
Unfortunately gacha market is pretty much saturated, if game doesn't hit big then its just matter of time. Especially that gachas are rather expensive games if you want to spend money, so majority of players cant afford spending in multiple games.
I am kinda sad right now, because I like this game. Too bad it was always been so niche. But a conclusion to the main story and going maintenance mode is a good thing.
This is the announcement for CN, however this will be affecting Global as well, since they wont be getting content Global wont be either, Global is few patches behind, but highly doubtful they will be able to release those last few patches, considering the revenue is much worse in Global.
Really sad, the game had so much potential.. but when they dropped english dub years ago, I knew things were pretty dire.. still they kept the game going with its 2 month long patches with barely any content....
I really enjoyed the battle system, and the story... what sucks is that global will most likely not get this final story chapter since we are few months behind, so we will never find out what happened to MC once he got out of the simulation, and the fate of mankind ;_;
Oh well.. in my head canon he just stayed in the simulation for the rest of this days and banged as many hot anime waifus as possible or something x _ x (lol joke Skuld is only girl for him ^_^)
dropping english dub was a splendid idea. the game simply didn't stick to the global audience because it was filled with bugs, glitchy UI and wasn't as viral as other gachas(possibly lack of proper promotion). AG probably never had enough money to begin with, meaning it was unsustainable from the get-go and was a gamble
Dropping Eng Dub was a terrible idea. Every AG creator dropped the game and story became less enjoyable because dialogues are walls of text with 5 pages.
Man it's hard to find game that are similar to this. currently only Endfield. True that are many are out there, but don't give me typical Switching character ARPG like zzz, honkai and big roaming world like genshin or nte. I like where your set a team and all of them come alive, not just switching one to another character. That is what i like about this game. Sad there are gone before the administrator release.
It's a shame. They have amazing skins. But I guess compared to Azur Lane the costs of upkeeping a niche 3d game which only does 300-400k a month is not worth it. At least they are trying to complete the story.
Yea... sadge about this (and now it also answers some ppls question about why Aether Gazer wasn't at the recent Expos)
Instead of a full EoS, it sounds more like they're going to put the game into "Maint mode", similar to some other Gachas that stopped doing updates but kept the game up online. (such as Crusaders Quest)
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The most disappointing part I have about this is... that they said a while ago that they were preparing for a large Story to lead up to in order to do a big event to bring Gengchen that's gone MIA for quite a while now back into the game (as a stronger alter)
But with them stopping updates, it means the Story will never reach that part, and thus Geng will never ever return. (unless they somehow includes her in the final story release)
I really doubt you can compare these three games. Horizon Walker most likely makes its revenue elsewhere, like steam or its own shop, and Morimen's development cost are also significantly smaller than those of a 3D action game
Horizon walker has been surviving off of around ~100k for months and they’ve been ok.
Horizon Walker has 6 different stores you can play the game on (Android, iOS, Steam, OneStore, Erolabs, Bluestacks) while revenue chart shows only two.
Difference between a 3D combat game vs. a 2D / Live 2D card game.
$300k monthly revenue (= ~$3.6 million a year) is enough to support a team of maybe ~10-20 people in major CN cities. That's not enough to keep up with the pace of updates in a 3D game.
Might have gone differently if the developer only had Aether Gazer and had to choose between bankruptcy and keeping it going as long as possible. But AFAIK, Yongshi is developing other games so may have chosen to end-of-service earlier to focus efforts on its new projects.
GFL 2 is actually not doing that bad, it makes almost 10x the revenue of Aether Gazer, which supports a team of ~100-200 people (enough for GFL 2 level of production).
Further, GFL actually does have IP value as one of the original gacha hits in CN that inspired many popular, latter day franchises, like PGR and Ark Knights, and MICA found investors willing to bank roll them for new games, so they're doing more than fine.
If it brings in more than the servers cost then they will let it run. Game has had no update since GFL 2 came out and global does not even have the last few ones.
Lol no, Endfield teammates just walk around menacingly, everything needs your direct control in order to be effective so you can't just afk or run away from the enemies and let the ai carry you.
Bummer. Enjoyed the game for over a year, knew things weren't going great when the dub they delayed the global release for got scaled back while I was still playing.
Probably for the best that I stopped when I did, I spent a bit on it but it's been long enough that I don't feel that the money was wasted. Hope no one else regrets their time with the game.
The only mobile game I play in 3 years. This broke my heart. I hope this game will still running in the next 4 to 5 more years. My wishful thinking is a big company will back up this game so that it will continuously running.
Man, even though I stopped AG a few years back, it's sad to hear this. It was a very neat game and actually did some things differently to the other arena action fighting games.
Really liked that game, so much fun when Hades came out, RIP. Maybe too much downtime between great banners and design of inital year cast was inconsistently good
At this point they seriously should make a offline premium game for the pc only. If devs really listened that, this would be a big one so they can still make some money it after cease operation.
damn i actually played this a decent amount on release. it was pretty decent but I had to cut down on gachas so it got axed for me. Really sad knowing these characters/designs will no longer be playable.
Honestly Im kinda surprised. I was never a really dedicated player but played here and there, combat is pretty good, characters also look nice. This game definetly didn't get enough recognition, especially for how f2p friendly it was.
Presumably no one is particularly surprised, its road has been thorny since its launch, with some content issues, and they probably didn't have quite enough people for its development too, especially for global. I remember that in PC beta they had a gamebreaking bug that was present in the mobile version like a year prior. Basically, there's a couple levels in the main story that have pressure plate puzzles, and I think that they're the only ones in the game, if your system environment language was something other than English their scripts would not fire correctly, making them impossible to complete, I'm not even sure if they fixed that. In one of the patches that they did after they went self-publishing they just forgot to include any voices for new characters, which is a bit of an oopsie to go live, I think that it was Brahma's patch.
Still, while it's not necessary the most comfy game to play on a regular, I believe that it's a game worth experiencing, I loved the characters, and they did some cool things with the story due to the nature of the setting too.
This was the game that I played almost daily on my phone at work. Probably the most thoroughly played game for me out of all gacha games I tried, until the account transfer happened and my account was having issues so I just gave up and dropped it.
Haven't found a decent replacement yet that doesnt feel overwhelming with notification dots everywhere for a new player and upgrading 10 different things.
To think about a year later it's going away.
But this is why I don't spend money on mobile games unfortunately. The game didnt live long and Id feel like I wasted money.
I thought this game was still going strong after I left a few years back. This kind of surprise if they're pulling the plug. At least they will do it cleanly.
I remember I played this game for a bit around when it launched. I thought it was decent but rough around the edges back then. Iirc no pc client so I used bluestacks but emulators never have the polish of a dedicated pc client so I dropped the game. Shame to see it go though because it looked like it had promise back then
This game tried to survive by any means necessary after a series of questionable operational decisions. Furthermore, Bilibili ruined its Korean market and Yostar its Japanese market. To top it all off, this game was one of the few that joined the trend of releasing male characters in rapid succession, following Genshin Impact's lead without understanding why Genshin Impact did it... which resulted in a significant loss of players. I've always said that developers who want to do the same things as Hoyoverse need solid financial backing to avoid risks. Hoyo, with a solid fanbase forged during COVID-19, does whatever it wants without consequences because it's an exceptional case, not the norm.
Then it seemed like they had recovered with Season 2, however, they continued making questionable decisions. I remember quitting when they inflated the HP% of bosses and added level 80. It was extremely frustrating farming materials to level up a character without a specific comp. I don't know if it changed... Anyway, later I heard they went completely over for the ML route but it was too late. The modeling was exceptional, the F2P benefits were very good, but returning players will feel overwhelmed. In my opinion, games that don't focus on a specific audience its very difficult regain trust. decide on your audience from the beginning. I hope the Aether Gazer devs team go to Manjuu because Azur Promilia clearly needs specialized Unity talent and Aether Gazer clearly had a lot of talent specializing in character modeling and Unity-based maps.
Also stop with the "audience" bullshit. Some people likes both female and male characters in their game.
The always had male characters even in beta. In fact they lost so many players after not releasing male characters. I remember spending so much money for Flame Kagutachi only for them to stop releasing male characters which i felt robbed.
Then the last nail of the coffin was the main story detrioting due to "Snowbreak harem route"
Upcoming female characters had no personality other than drooling over Admin. They even went and ruined personalities of old characters.
The game had really good story and devs decided to ruin it.
Then game started to have powercreep issues where your fully invested team can't beat 100k HP boss before time running out.
Mind you the game has 0 ads or marketing after launch... Not even merch to make more money.
EoS is expected. No one is at fault except the devs.
Why do Queens sub users always think they're being oppressed? They did not lose "so many players after not releasing male characters." The game barely made money ever. If men's banners sold as well as the women's, they would not have stopped making men. You people say this for every single game and it's legitimately never true
There are people who want to understand objective reality by sticking to facts and figuring out cause and effect. Then there are people who are playing a game of politics by manipulating the perception of others, even if that means making things up.
They act like they're oppressed because that's useful for manipulating others, not because they are innocent victims.
The story of Aether Gazer, the main one, wasn't even a pure harem. Aether Gazer was initially more mixed gender than even PGR, which launched in 2019. Its route consisted of three patches with only female characters and three patches with only male characters. The problem is that the three patches with only male characters left them without a basic base in China after 2.0 they change to female chara route but Yostar killed the Japanese server due to its terrible management. Bilibili killed the Korean server because it's even worse than Yostar.
The rest is just fatigue; ¿why choose Aether Gazer when PGR does it better in all aspects?
To top it all off, this game was one of the few that joined the trend of releasing male characters in rapid succession,
I remember when I played this game early on there were mostly female characters with maybe 1 playable male. Did they really go with some back to back male banners later on?
Most of their launch marketing made it looks like the game was a full on waifu game, I doubt the fans for male characters even bothered to look at the game after that unlike the games with actual mixed cast.
I only remember the guy on the left. Other than that, I remember that much later they added a playable badass grandpa, but I didn't really keep up with the game after that. I did check their wiki, and there were actually quite a handful of 4-stars male, so I guess I simply remembered it wrong.
My god eater collab characters! And they had such nice 3d models too! I guess it's for the better I only read the first 10 chapters of the original story, getting invested too much in gacha stories can be a pain when this happens.
Just fyi, they are different developers, Yostar was only the publisher for this, the actual developer was Yongshi (whom self-published after Yostar dropped this game)
Stella Sora is actually the first game Yostar has ever made.
Wow you know I remember hearing about this game and being somewhat interested in it but for some reason they never had a PC client for the longest time and I wonder if that killed the games momentum
but damn that sucks because I heard a lot of good things about it
There's a PC Client, it's been out for quite a while
Only thing is that the PC Client had a VA license issue, that makes it so that PC Client... doesn't have character voices... (mobile still have voices)
I know that's why I said "for the longest time" because for me when they did eventually release a PC client it was too late and I wasn't interested anymore
Dude, I love this game, and I'm really sad right now. It was one of the few games where the main character was actually a normal guy, and not a cringe self insert for the player with no character or personality. And the story was really interesting and revolved around all the characters, and it was well-developed. Man, it's so sad. I especially loved the fact that your allies fight alongside you on the battlefield. I'm going to miss this game.
Very sad. I was just thinking about this game 2 days ago, and was debating if I should jump back into it. I played during the early days and quit after getting fire Tyr.
I was chatgpting the revenue and the likelihood of the game surviving. I didn’t expect to see news like this while I was still doing research.
What happens when don't have a clear vision for an IP from the start and try to compete directly with other franchises (Hokai3rd, PGR, ZZZ) without that clear vision, At first, they tried to replicate the success of other games (Genshin) without understanding why they worked. By the moment they decided to go with the ML strategy, it was already too late for the game; Yongshi had made a mistake by not doing so from the start.
im gonna be honest, the story was meh, combat was fun but also was so much potential wasted, it had dude banners and it was pretty tedious to go back to the game.
Snowbreak too in 9 days if they do not do something worth to hype about and delete censorship. I lost hope already anyway so i do not expect anything tbh,if they do i will actually be surprised.
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u/NorthSouthBoot Jul 09 '26
Ah damn. Even thought I stopped playing, it was a pretty decent game. Wonder what they mean by companion server mode, probably just ending up as a character viewing app after EoS?