Minecraft Dev's Card Game Scrolls Is Shutting Down

Minecraft developer Mojang announced on Monday that it is shutting down its collectible card game, Scrolls. The Swedish studio announced the news through a post on the game's official website.

"After much deliberation, we've come to an important decision that we'd like to share: Echoes will be the last major content patch for Scrolls," the developer explained. "We won't be adding features or sets from now on, though we are planning to keep a close eye on game balance."

Scrolls will remain available to buy "for the time being," while servers will stay online through "at least" July 1. "All future proceeds will go towards keeping Scrolls playable for as long as possible," Mojang said.

Mojang went on to say that "tens of thousands" of people played Scrolls every day. However, "the game has reached a point where it can no longer sustain continuous development," the studio explained.

"We've had a great time working on Scrolls, and appreciate every last player who's downloaded our game. Extra big thanks to the most dedicated members of our community; some of you have logged in almost every day since release and dedicated a large portion of your time to dominating the leaderboards and taking care of new players," it added. "We salute you, honorable scrolldiers."

The closure of Scrolls comes less than a year after Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang. It is unclear if Mojang has any other games in development, or if the studio is now focused exclusively on Minecraft.

Scrolls has been somewhat controversial. In August 2011, Bethesda took legal action against Mojang, claiming that the studio was infringing on a trademark for the Elder Scrolls series. This case was later settled, with Mojang able to keep the Scrolls name as long as it agreed not to make an Elder Scrolls competitor.

For its part, Bethesda just recently announced its own Elder Scrolls collectible card game called The Elder Scrolls Legends. It's unclear if this has anything to do with Scrolls shutting down.