“The Witcher: Monster Slayer” comes to an end: when you can no longer play it on mobile

Some employees who worked on the “Pokémon Go”-style game The Witcher: Monster Slayer will lose their jobs.

CD Projekt Red is shutting down The Witcher: Monster Slayer, its Pokémon Go-style mobile title released last year. The game will begin to wind down at the end of January, before going offline for good at the end of June.

Unfortunately, this thing will also mean layoffs. As detailed in a list of FAQs (uncovered by IGN), some developers from Spokko (the publisher’s mobile game studio launched in 2018) who worked on the game will not be staying. The publisher says it’s turning Spokko into CD Projekt Red, but only a few employees are making the transition.

The Witcher: Monster Slayer will no longer be playable next year

The publisher will remove The Witcher: Monster Slayer from the App Store and Google Play on January 31, 2023. It will also disable in-game purchases and stop adding new content on that day. The servers will remain active for existing players until June 30.

Announced a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic, the monster-killing mobile game seemed like a fair bet. With players anxious from a seemingly endless quarantine, a geocaching-inspired adventure that asks Witcher fans to get out into the real world (while still practicing social distancing) might have captured the mood of the moment.

But that never fully unfolded, as the title wasn’t released until the following summer, when vaccination rates rose and life began to regain a semblance of normalcy. Whether you can trace the game’s shutdown to the pandemic-related moment or not, CD Projekt Red admits that it “didn’t meet our business expectations.”

CD Project Red recently announced a long-term roadmap that includes a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 and several new Witcher games – none of which require you to leave your couch.