Daybreak Game Company had just announced back in October that they had plans on overhauling and improving Planetside Arena, and that they would be using it as a springboard for Planetside 3’s development. Well, it looks like that’s not entirely going to pan out the way they thought, because Planetside Arena is shutting down January 10th, 2020.

Over on the Steam community thread Daybreak issued a statement regarding the future of Planetside Arena, or rather the lack of its future.

Planetside executive producer Andy Sites explained…

“After careful consideration, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down PlanetSide Arena servers.

 

“While our team set out with an ambitious vision for a game that combined the massive-scale combat and camaraderie of PlanetSide through a diverse collection of new game modes, it has become clear after several months in Early Access that our population levels make it impossible to sustain the gameplay experience we envisioned.

 

“As a result, PlanetSide Arena will formally shut down servers on January 10th, 2020 at 5:00 PM (PST). We are actively working with Steam to ensure that all players who made purchases during Early Access will automatically receive a full refund to their Steam Wallet after servers shut down in January.“

Ouch. This comes just after a year of operation for Planetside Arena, which originally opened up back on January 29th, 2019.

There’s a short F.A.Q., below the statement, where they explain that you’ll be able to play the Battle Royale-esque shooter up until January 10th, but after that the game will no longer be operable.

Cash shop items are no longer available for purchase and all microtransactions have ceased.

If you purchased some cash shop items or microtransactions, you’ll be able to spend your currency on items up until January 10th, at which point the servers, your progress, your items, and everything you purchased will go kaput.

If you did make a purchase but did not use the items you purchased, you will be eligible for a refund.

This doesn’t bode well for the future of Planetside 3 unless Daybreak gets a cash infusion from somewhere, but we know it won’t be coming from any sort of Planetside Arena revenue.

(Thanks for the news tip dk max)