On March 28, Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel officially announced that they were going to be ending service on September 4, 2023. Additionally, all sales of Crystals (their in-game currency) will no longer be available for purchase starting immediately after the announcement was made. The message itself was a final thanks to players who had supported the game since its initial launch back in July 2022. The announcement also stated that they would be increasing the amount of rewards players could get by playing the game until the game closes for good, which might help players get the last cards and cosmetics that they would wish to have.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel is a mobile game designed to be a twist on the normal Yu-Gi-Oh! formula. The duels in this game were designed to be a four-player battle-royale, where every player would be dueling against the other three players on the table in an eight-turn, real-time match. Winners were decided by the life-point totals they had at the end of the eight turns, with the highest being first and the lowest being last.

The game also featured other modes such as four-player co-op, which had four players team up together to battle a raid boss, and one-player mode, which had people play with a former Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonist against other bots.

According to The Gamer, Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel had its initial worldwide release on September 6, 2022, so the game will end just shy of its first anniversary. This article also notes however that many fans were expecting this turn of events, since there were problems with the pay-to-win mechanics and its lack of a PC port.

It is also important to note that Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel might have also been overshadowed by another Yu-Gi-Oh! game that released just months before Cross Duel came out. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel was released on January 18, 2022, and over the course of the last year or so, Master Duel has accumulated a total of over 20 million downloads according to Gematsu. It seems as though Cross Duel has not reached the same levels of success as its Steam counterpart, as Master Duel only recently completed its first anniversary and is still going strong.

The Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel Twitter account released a final statement about the servers closing, expressing their appreciation of the support the game has gotten over the last year it has been up. Their final message states the date and time of the game’s services ending, stating:

“It is with heavy hearts that we announce that we will be ending service on 05:00 (UTC) on Monday, September 4, 2023.”

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the Yu-Gi-Oh! CROSS DUEL community for its wonderful support. It is with heavy hearts that we announce that we will be ending service at 05:00 (UTC) on Monday, September 4, 2023.https://t.co/4Q5YCPVQJh#YuGiOhCROSSDUEL pic.twitter.com/Nev5YV9oEw

— YGOCrossDuel (@YGOCrossDuel) March 28, 2023