If the game was offline, SEGA would not be making money off of it, since that's all that really matters. :v:
Oh wow. This is crazy good timing. I've just reached Episode/Stage 48 and was debating taking a break before powering through to the final Story chapters. Guess I'll get that done ASAP. Not sure if I've actually enjoyed my experience. It's a good time-waster and the music has all been pretty great, but I won't be heart broken to see it go or anything. I'm near the end now and might be able to scribble up the final episode(s) Dialogue in a Text file as I go. Wouldn't be too hard. I've only been glancing glazed-eyes at the story so far though, and only really found nit-picks with the way characters are presented. (Knuckles randomly dicking around with Sonic whilst leaving the animal buddies to guard the Master Emerald always raised my eyebrow). Only thing I found that got nicely addressed were the Wisps giving a sentence of dialogue to explain their reasoning for hanging around since Colours (hell, more of a reason than Lost World did, anyway) Anything else worth noting plot-wise that had any bigger importance? Sounds like I've missed something unless it's things covered in the final episodes. Gotta admit though, actually giving the original Animal Buddies some importance is refreshing.
Not too surprised about Runners shutting down, writing was on the wall for months. With that said, I will admit Sega called it quits on the game a lot sooner than I expected. By the time it goes offline, it would had been online worldwide for only a year and one month (a year and a half if we include the soft launch period). EDIT: And for comparison's sake, it's worth noting that Hardlight's Jump and Dash have been out for three-four years now, and are still available (and got their own sequels/spinoffs; Jump Fever and Dash 2: Sonic Boom). Kinda puts into perspective how hard Sonic Team dropped the ball with this game. They had an established mobile market that had proved itself to be receptive towards mobile Sonic games and endless 2D runners; yet their attempt to hit the sweet spot of both worlds with a Sonic-themed endless 2D runner turned out to be a half-baked dud. SONIC RUNNERS OK --> SONIC RUNNERS KO.
It's really a pity... I always wanted to play this game but because my phone wasn't able to handle the game I just couldn't Ironically, last weekend I bought a new phone and I was thinking on try this game...
All things considered this game was around for a hot second. Hope you learned a lesson from this Sega.
Can't say I'm even remotely surprised or upset by this. I'd say they should take this as a learning experience, but if I had a nickel for every time I said that... I'd have a dollar maybe I dunno. Hey, at least it gave us a kickass OST.
I've just found out: They've actually got all the cutscenes are YouTube. The only thing that's missing are the special episodes. I've actually got the cutscenes for all the special episodes that were released after the soft launch (just need to find time to upload them!), so it's just the Easter and Puyo Puyo episodes that are lost forever.
@big smile - I think that it's 27th July, not June: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cjc8oBRWgAAOCiu.jpg:large (good that it's quite obvious that 27 is day, I'm always having issues with this alternative method of writing the date with swapped day and month :P) Nevertheless - that's a shame, because after allowing to purchase for red coins (just as Amy) Chaotix and Dark characters I was quite satisfied, that they've (partially) changed one of the most annoying things which I've never liked (another one was necessity of playing online - well, now I don't like that feature even more than previously :P)
DRM and server-side restrictions consigns another title to be lost forever. =/ If you're good with packet logging, now would be the time to start doing so for a potential server replacement.
Sweet, although damn shame about the Puyo episodes. As soon as I saw Carbuncle as a helper and realized there had been an event, I was hoping for it to come back. Guess I jumped on too late for that one. Still, a good re-watch (re-read?) of the cutscenes for the sake of catch-up sounds in order. I did enjoy how almost 1993 Fleetway-ish the overall plot was.
It was a decent game in the beginning, and I had a little fun with it, but nothing that made me want to come back and play more. I liked Hardlight's games better. I'm still a little sad to see it go, though.
Enjoyed it a fair bit in the soft launch, then from there it just performed worse and worse on my 5C to the point that I just couldn't play it due to weird frame skipping happening constantly. Sad to see it go, but ready to see what else is on the way.
Apparently the US version is being shut down on Monday: https://twitter.com/SonicRunners_US?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw They don't really seem to be handling this in the best way.
Wow, even faster than I expected. NA is not wasting any time washing their hands of this title. Also, it's worth noting how surprisingly barren that Twitter handle is. If you check the history for it...one tweet in June 2015 for when said handle launched (four days after the game's official release), another tweet in November 2015 (supposedly) for the 2.0 update, a third tweet two days later about the game going down maintenance...and this new tweet today about it shutting down. Nothing about the game's events, or any explicit references to the 2.0 update. And the first tweet from the handle made this year...is the news that the game is going offline the very next day. A bit hard to believe that's the official NA/US handle for the game, to be honest. So much radio silence from a Twitter account that represents a frequently-updated, online-only mobile game.
Man, that's odd. The latest tweet I'm seeing on there was from Nov 2015. Did something get deleted? I got an in-game message today for a 27th July close, but maybe that's a Japan/Europe date. .. Shame this has been an absolute trainwreck though, as I've just been lucky enough to hit three star S-Rank finally. Ah well, better take some screenshots for a keepsake!
For anyone who missed it on the previous page, the US Twitter feed apparently said briefly that the servers would be going down on Monday, which I assume means tomorrow. That has since been deleted, but I'm going to try to capture some video footage of the game for posterity today, anyway. EDIT: Just ran the game on an emulator. In-game, it's still giving the July shutdown date.
Well if they are closing the US server, I hope that just means US players will be transferred to the Japanese server.
Since Sonic Runners is being taken down, does anybody here have save files with all or most of the characters, buddies, events, etc. so that everything can be ripped before the game is taken down? There is a topic about this on the VG Resource. http://www.vg-resource.com/thread-29281.html
The game is apparently still up on the US servers, which may be why the tweet was deleted. Kinda odd that the Twitter handle didn't acknowledge its mistake though. And speaking of which, the tweet being deleted / the game still available is now prompting a few people to suspect whether the Sonic Runners US Twitter handle is even legitimate. A bit of speculation has arose that it's fake or fanmade rather than official.
