Developers Niantic and WB Games have announced that the mobile AR game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is to close after two and a half years of monster battling in a Pokémon GO-style style.
Wizards Unite launched in the summer of 2019, and by May 2021 had racked up 20 million downloads across Android and Apple handsets. Harry Potter fans played the game enough to turn some 37 million dollars of revenue. But the decision has been taken to remove the game from stores on December 6, 2021 and take its servers offline completely on January 31, 2022 - an action that will coincide with all social media accounts and its community forum being closed, too.
Remind yourself of how Wizards Unite began, with its launch trailer…
A post on the game’s official website advises users to use up any in-game currency they have before the end of January 2022, as refunds will not be possible unless that’s a legal requirement in a certain territory. “You will have the full opportunity to use your remaining gold,” reads the post, adding that a number of events are scheduled between now and the closure of Wizards Unite, including Half-Blood Prince events in November and a two-part Deathly Hallows event in December.
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The post adds that a number of gameplay changes will come into effect immediately, including extra rewards for Daily Assignments, the cap on daily Gifts has been removed, and collectibles such as ingredients and Spell Energy will appear on the map more frequently. Clearly, the aim is to go out with a bang, here. A little bombarda, or confringo, if you will. (Is that right? I'm Googling this stuff, don't hold my lack of spell knowledge against me.)
The post concludes: “We are incredibly thankful to every single person in our amazing community of witches and wizards for adventuring with us out in the real world.” Fans of Harry Potter games can still look forward to Hogwarts Legacy, of course - the much-anticipated open-world game releases for PC and consoles in 2022. Niantic, on the other hand, is keeping itself busy beyond Wizards Unite with the ever-popular Pokémon GO, the newly launched Pikmin Bloom and forthcoming Transformers: Heavy Metal.
Topics: Harry Potter