The shutdown of the Japanese versions of Dragon Quest of the Stars and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius on October 31, 2025 might not come as a surprise to fans. Dragon Quest of the Stars closed its global servers back on June 30, 2021, while Final Fantasy Brave Exvius ended service in the West on October 30, 2024. Employees of Gumi, the studio who worked on Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, were also asked to accept voluntary redundancy by the company last year. While upcoming in-game events are still set to take place, the shutdown of these titles means that Square Enix’s lineup of live-service mobile games is growing ever smaller, with only two titles currently running in the West.
Dragon Quest of the Stars and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius have had a good run. Both games were released in Japan on October 2015 and provided their players with ten years’ worth of content. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius still plans to release its final “Grand Finale Campaign” update, while Dragon Quest of the Stars will hold its own tenth anniversary event before closure. Following the shutdown of domestic servers, Square Enix plans to distribute a Memorial Edition of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius which allows players to view their collected Units and Vision Cards. Dragon Quest of the Stars players, on the other hand, will receive refunds for unused premium currency.
When October ends, Square Enix will have nine remaining live-service mobile games left. These are Sengoku IXA, Final Fantasy Record Keeper, War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis, Dragon Quest Tact, Dragon Quest Walk, Romancing SaGa Re: Universe, Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, and Emberstoria.
Sengoku IXA is an online war simulation game with RPG elements featuring famous figures from Japan’s war periods, such as Oda Nobunaga, Uesugi Kenshin, and Date Masamune. It was released in Japan in 2010, followed by an Indonesian version in 2013.
Final Fantasy Record Keeper is a role-playing gacha game that features original and returning characters from other Final Fantasy games. The Japanese version of the game was released on September 24, 2014 while a global version ran from March 26, 2015 to September 29, 2022.
War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius (not to be confused with the Brave Exvius that is scheduled to shut down this October) is a spin-off tactical RPG whose gameplay takes cues from Final Fantasy Tactics. It was released in Japan in November 2019 and had a global version that lasted from March 25, 2020 to May 29, 2025.
Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis is an RPG with gacha elements that retells the events of the original game. Set 15 years before Final Fantasy VII, it focuses on a younger Sephiroth. As one of the few titles whose global version is still active, the game was released for Android and iOS on September 7, 2023 before being added to PC (Steam) on December 7, 2023.
Dragon Quest Tact is a strategy RPG with gacha elements set in the Dragon Quest universe. While the game features a main story like other titles in the franchise, it also has limited-time events that entice players to periodically log in. It was released in Japan on July 16, 2020. A global version was released on January 28, 2021 before closing down on February 29, 2024.
Similar to Pokémon Go, Dragon Quest Walk is a location-based RPG where players must physically walk to real-life locations so they can battle iconic monsters from the franchise. The game was released in Japan on September 12, 2019. No global release is planned.
Romancing SaGa Re: Universe is a JRPG set 300 years after the events of Romancing SaGa 3 that features several trainable characters from the series. While the Japanese version of the game launched on December 6, 2018 and is still going strong, support for the global version (which was released on June 24, 2020) ended on December 1st, 2024.
Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent is a prequel to the first game and plays similarly to the other turn-based RPG titles in the franchise. Instead of featuring four controllable characters in battle, Champions of the Continent features eight characters to account for purchasable items and characters via its gacha systems. It was initially released in Japan on October 28, 2020 before getting a Western release on July 27, 2022 and a Southeast Asian release on December 7, 2023.
Emberstoria is a strategy RPG where humanity recruits fallen warriors in a quest to defeat the beasts of Purgatory. As the youngest live-service mobile game on the list, Emberstoria was released in Japan on November 27, 2024. No global release has been announced yet.
With the exception of titles that have no global releases, only Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis and Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent are still available worldwide. It should also be noted that all of the remaining live-service titles have RPG elements, which is to be expected given Square Enix’s repertoire (though not all of them are being developed by the company).
Square Enix has been on a bit of a closing run in its mobile game division lately. Aside from the aforementioned titles whose global releases have ended, Square also fully discontinued mobile games such as Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, Nier Reincarnation, and Echoes of Mana. It has even ceased development on some unreleased games like Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link. Given how costly some of these free-to-play games are to make, perhaps Square Enix wants to focus on titles with high player retention.
