Square Enix has announced that it will shut down Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis later this year, bringing the free-to-play mobile RPG to an end just over three years after its launch. The publisher said it decided after determining that it would be "difficult to continue" providing the experience it wanted for players, but didn't give a more specific reason for the closure. However, there's still some time for players to get in their last sessions.
Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis will shut down on October 6, 2026. In a new statement, Square Enix confirmed that it has already stopped selling the game's premium currency, Red Crystals, but plans to keep releasing events and updates until the servers go offline. After that, players will lose access to the game entirely, and Square Enix says it will delete account data once it completes the end-of-service process.
Speaking about the closure, the company said, "We understand that this news may be disappointing, and we sincerely apologize for the abrupt nature of this announcement."
Square Enix added that it has "worked to provide the best possible experience for our players" over the last few years. While live-service game closures have become increasingly common, Ever Crisis leaves behind an unusual problem. The game doesn't just contain limited-time events or cosmetic items; it also serves as the home for important pieces of wider Final Fantasy lore.
Specifically, the game contains the story of Glenn Lodbrok, a character who first appeared in Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, another free mobile game that Square Enix shut down in 2023. Ever Crisis expanded on Glenn's backstory before he later made a brief appearance in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, meaning part of his history now exists almost entirely in two live-service games that you can no longer actually play.
It gets even stranger, though. Square Enix plans to add Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII to Ever Crisis shortly before the shutdown. The original Before Crisis launched exclusively in Japan on pre-smartphone handsets (we're talking the days of clackety keys) and remains one of the hardest Final Fantasy titles to access. It has effectively become lost media.
In other words, Square Enix is preserving one inaccessible mobile game by putting it inside another mobile game that's about to disappear. Maybe Square Enix will eventually package Ever Crisis's story content into a standalone paid release, but it hasn't announced any such plans. Unless that changes, its exclusive stories will vanish when the servers shut down in October.
If you're feeling like taking a trip down memory lane in the meantime, our list of the best Final Fantasy games has got you covered.