Gwent: The Witcher Card Game will be removed from Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 consoles over the coming months.
The closure was announced today by the game’s developers, CD Project Red, on the official Gwent website where it was explained that the reason for the closure was the decrease in players on consoles and the increase in players on the newly released mobile versions.
“When we launched the console versions of GWENT back in 2017, our intention was to provide console players with the same level of support as their PC counterparts,” the post reads. “However, having just launched GWENT on iOS, and with the Android version coming, the number of supported platforms would significantly increase. Looking to the future, we do not believe we can support a growing number of different versions of GWENT while improving feature parity between them.”
A web page will launch next week which will allow players to copy their Xbox One or PS4 data to an account that can be used on PC, iOS, and Android. Refunds on any in-game purchases made won’t be made.
The timing of this announcement is rather odd considering that Netflix’s The Witcher TV series is set to debut this month and could potentially drive a lot of new users to the Gwent video game.
This isn’t the first version of Gwent to be closed down. A Windows 10 version distributed via the Microsoft Store was also shuttered over a year ago.
It’s unclear why the playerbase of Gwent diminished so dramatically but one theory could be that the majority of gamers who were interested in it, jumped in during the open beta and, after the game refreshed all progress and unlocked cards several times during updates, players simply lost interest or grew frustrated.
I personally played Gwent on Xbox One on an almost daily basis during the open beta for almost an entire year but grew frustrated with the number of dramatic changes and revamps. I don’t think I even played it after it came out of beta. The interest was gone.
Did you play Gwent on Xbox One and are you still playing now? Let us know how this affects you in the comments below and then follow us on Twitter for more Xbox gaming content.
