What Happened to Ghost in the Shell: First Assault Online?
Two years, one unpopular overhaul, and a licensed world that closed on schedule.
Nexon secured the Stand Alone Complex license from Kodansha in December 2012 and, with developer Neople (Dungeon Fighter Online), built a free-to-play first-person shooter around Section 9, first announced as First Connection Online. It entered Steam Early Access on December 14, 2015 and launched July 28, 2016. In July 2017 the “Renewal” update locked weapons to character classes, discarding loadouts players had built and bought; concurrent numbers fell, and within weeks Nexon announced the end: Japan’s servers closed November 29, 2017, and the West followed on December 6, 2017, with Nexon crediting players’ purchases in its own currency on the way out. The client survives in archives; the servers, which were the game, do not.
BEFORE THE SHOOTER
Japan-only mobileS.A.C. Cyber Mission (2011)
A GREE mobile game released February 14, 2011: the franchise’s first phone outing, Japan-only like everything that followed on mobile.
Mobage Stand Alone Complex (2011)
Butterfly and 4cast’s feature-phone social game on Mobage, pre-registered from November 16, 2011, casting the player as a new Section 9 investigator in an original story.
Tachikoma Wars! (2012)
Mobage’s social game of March 29, 2012, built around the Tachikoma: proof that by 2012 the spider tanks, not the Major, were the franchise’s most licensable faces.