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Shadowbane closing May 1

By Tom Magrino, GameSpotPosted Apr 20, 2009 11:47 am PT

Ubisoft and Stray Bullet Games' PVP-focused MMORPG calling it quits six years after launch.

The first few months of 2009 have begun to resemble a graveyard for massively multiplayer online role-playing games. At the end of January, Namco Bandai and Flagship Studios' first-person-shooter role-playing hybrid Hellgate: London was taken offline. The following month, NCsoft turned the lights out on Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa. Now, one more MMOG is in its death throes, as Ubisoft has announced that its fantasy online RPG Shadowbane will shut down on May 1.

"We come to you now with regret and sadness, but also happiness and pride," a Ubisoft representative wrote on the game's official Web site. "Regret and sadness that it has finally come to this and as of May 1, 2009, the Shadowbane servers will be powered down once and for all. Yet happiness that it lasted so very long, and pride to be able to stand before such a passionate community to thank you for your undying support and unwavering loyalty to Shadowbane."

Based heavily on player-versus-player online gaming, Shadowbane launched to mostly positive reviews in March 2003. After signing on to publish the title in 2001, Ubisoft eventually purchased the game's license and developer Wolfpack Studios. However, in 2006, shortly after revealing that Shadowbane would become a free-to-play, ad-supported venture, Ubisoft announced plans to close Wolfpack.

Many members of the defunct Wolfpack went on to form Stray Bullet Games, which was contracted by Ubisoft to continue supporting Shadowbane. The independent studio is currently at work on a new MMOG, rumored to be in development for the Nintendo Wii.

45 Comments

  • Glade_Gnarr

    Posted Apr 22, 2009 4:54 pm PT

    That's why mmo's suck, you can't play them without the servers unlike normal games. I was just playing Megaman X the other day for example.

  • Skullcandy

    Posted Apr 22, 2009 11:14 am PT

    I was surprised to learn that Shadowbane was still up and running. A decent game but bug-ridden and nothing new. MMO's are now sadly just another genre. Play one and you've really played them all.

  • kilaan

    Posted Apr 21, 2009 10:16 am PT

    I played this game for 6 months when it first released. The biggest cause of death was bugs. I remember a huge battle taking place with 100+ people from each side. By the time the battle actually took place it was basically 5 vs 5 because everybody else crashed from the infamous sb.exe error. The other major reason it failed was because it took so long to get a really good town going (couple months) and it only took at max a couple days to lose it.

  • Tionde

    Posted Apr 21, 2009 3:38 am PT

    Sad to see a game that it obviously liked by many, go down. I am suprised however, that in all these posts that reference about 2000 other MMO:s, LOTRO isn't mentioned a single time. Its a great game with a solid player base, and i doubt it will be shut down before the montain of dooms fiery chasms swallows the internet. My condolances to all Shadowbane players, hope u find a new MMOto make your home.

  • bigelf72

    Posted Apr 21, 2009 12:40 am PT

    This is good news. Most Shadowbane players will find a better home in Darkfall. Darkfall is the most hardcore MMO ever made, hardcore FFA players will love it.

  • Dungeoncrawler1

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 11:52 pm PT

    I played this game when it first launched. Very hard-core and not for anyone wanting to bank-sit. Frustrating sometimes because of the heavy pvp element. You could be out trying to level your toon and get ambushed by another guild. It was a good night if you were able to get one level a session. Have not played in a very long time but glad to see it lasted for so long. Sorry to see it ending. Good luck to all the players.

  • aeguvas_basic

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 10:16 pm PT

    Seems like it is older than 6 years.

  • akguc

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 9:31 pm PT

    I had an assassin , it was fun to attack a lone shopper unaware your presence, it was like silence of the lamb. The only problem with it was technical for me, there was alot of lag and after some point I had to quit.

  • neil108

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 9:18 pm PT

    Shadowbane seems like it would have been a lot of fun. Never played it. My experience with MMOs, those being both warhammer and AoC. They are great fun for the first 2 or 3 weeks when the mass influx of player population is there. After that dies down, the MMO becomes useless as the population within the game world becomes too spread out. THis happened in both AoC and Warhammer. You may say but Wow is great its the only MMO thats going to be around that is worth a damn. ? Whats the point so if you want to play an MMO thats going to be around you have to play WoW. Sorry, ill pass. never played wow since the start of that game and i'm certainly not going to plow thru 80 lvls just to start playing it today. Bring back classic RPG gaming, but its kinda hard to do that when companies arent making a profit and have no incentive to create these games.

  • nurse_tsunami

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 7:22 pm PT

    Always sad to see a MMO go down, especially if it is well liked by its players. Hopefully something new and fresh will come out of its ashes.

  • WorldMusc_basic

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 7:11 pm PT

    Best MMO I've ever played in my life. I beta tested AO, WoW, Everquest etc. But Shadowbane hands down was the greatest political and pvp based mmo ever.

    You had epic battles, 3am seiges, rampant pking. It was amazing. For those of you who played this, we will always remember the great years we had. Btw for those of you who play WoWcrap, all the top Arena guilds and early 60's were Shadowbane guilds. Best game ever *sheds tear

    off to play Darkfall

  • firedrakes

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 6:14 pm PT

    same here raeldor

  • Raeldor

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 5:40 pm PT

    I played this game when it first came out. It had a lot of potential, but definitely wasn't for care bears. Pvp was pretty hardcore, and you could even steal items from other players which was cool.

    They should open-source some of these games. If they're going to die anyways, why not give some hobbyists a crack at it?

  • Khasym

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 5:27 pm PT

    Well, since I appear to be the fogey here, I'll clue those who don't know in


    Shadowbane was a latecomer contender against Everquest way back in the days before WoWdom. From a game standpoint, it wasn't too bad. It had a pretty detailed character creation system, that still puts even WoW to shame with it's depth.


    Sadly, that really was ALL Shadowbane had going for it. Just like most modern MMO's do against WoW, Shadowbane never struck the chord with the gaming market. It was just too smilar to Everquest once you got past the creation system. And Everquest was still expanding and evolving, just like WoW does now. Shadowbane fell off radar once Ubisoft shelved Wolfpack Studios, but it never truly shut down. The costs kept getting less and less, until the servers were jsut turned over to run for free. But by that time, Ubisoft really lost interest in the game.


    I'm not really sure if today's announcement constitutes news, only because Shadowbane itself has been mainly absent from the MMO world. The game itself still ran, but then again, so does Ultima Online. But I don't know how many people are even aware of what UO IS, let alone an even less successful game like Shadowbane

  • Sins-of-Mosin

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 5:13 pm PT

    I've never heard of this game before. Also, Hellgate officially died this year but most people know it died a couple months after it came out.

  • Gooshnads

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 5:04 pm PT

    shhhaAAAdow b..ane????
    what is this? lol
    never really heard of it o.O

  • GHOSTRyDr

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 5:00 pm PT

    Thank God.

  • warrenmats

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 4:46 pm PT

    NOOOOOOOOOOOO WHYYYYYYYY

  • PiNwOrM

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 4:37 pm PT

    Iceman, way to fail. The game is entirely free, not pay-to-play. It even says so in the damned article. Baffling..

  • Hazzerz

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 4:35 pm PT

    Heard of it, but I never tried it. Regret that now.

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