Developer Smilegate announced that Lost Ark will end service for its Japan servers on March 20, 2024. The company has also shared the timeline for the end of services of various elements surrounding the game.
In a statement released by the Lost Ark Japanese management team, the company informed of the decision to terminate service for the servers and thanked players for their support. The team stated that after talks with the developers, they decided it would be “difficult to provide a satisfying experience for players” and apologized for not being able to provide more time for Japanese players.
Smilegate has also announced that the sale of limited-time items in the Lost Ark shop and the Item Mall will be interrupted for players in the Japanese servers from January 17, 2024. Likewise, Japanese Internet Cafe services for the game will end on January 24, 2024. The sale of Royal Crystals will end after a scheduled maintenance for January 31, 2024. Players will keep any Royal Crystals obtained and can spend them freely.
Finally, the Japanese servers for Lost Ark will close on March 20, 2024, at 7 pm JST. All of the official Japanese social media accounts for the game, as well as support services, will cease operations at the same time. Lost Ark originally appeared in Japan on September 23, 2020, not too long after its initial South Korean release on December 4, 2019.
The global release of the game happened on February 11, 2022. At the time of writing, there is no announcement of service ending for any other servers. The game has seen a lot of support on the global servers since its release, with Smilegate sharing a robust roadmap for 2023 and a recent 2024 roadmap, as well as notes for the January 2024 update of the game.
Lost Ark is available for PC.
