Tabula Rasa canned by NCsoft
Sci-fi MMO has until February.
NCsoft has announced that it is to close down its struggling science-fiction MMO, Tabula Rasa.
The servers will be shut down on 28th February 2009. Subscriptions will be ended and the game made free-to-play from 10th January.
The game launched just over a year ago, on 2nd November 2007 - so it will be discontinued after just 16 months of operation.
Tabula Rasa players who had an active subscription last Friday will get a parting gift from NCsoft: three free months of both City of Heroes and Lineage II, including digital copies of the games, and a copy and one free month of the forthcoming Aion: The Tower of Eternity, including beta and pre-order access.
The developer assured players that it would continue supporting the game with "really fun" updates until it closes - although it's not clear if this will include the recently-announced Earth campaign.
Tabula Rasa's creator, amateur spaceman Richard Garriott, left NCsoft earlier this month citing "new interests" as the company's profits took a hefty turn for the worse.
"Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected," the developer said in a statement. "The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for. "