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It's game over as ngmoco's shuts down first gen F2P titles We Rule, Touch Pets and GodFinger

Progress marches onwards

It's game over as ngmoco's shuts down first gen F2P titles We Rule, Touch Pets and GodFinger
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The iOS gaming world is whirlygig of activity, but was it really three years ago that ngmoco released We Rule?

I played it the weekend it was released, and would have put it further back into the midst of time, but my brain is long past its sell-by date.

Anyhow, while the social kingdom-building game wasn't the first free-to-play game released for iPhone, it was one of the most high profile, and one of the first to demonstrate how developers could make lots of money.

But time moves on, and now it, and a couple of other of ngmoco's pioneering games, are being closed.

It's all over

According to a blog post from the US developer - now a subsidiary of Japanese giant DeNA - We Rule Deluxe, Touch Pets Cats, Touch Pets Dogs 2 and GodFinger All-Stars are being shut down on 31st March.

Ironically, GodFinger outlasted its developer, UK-based Wonderland, which became Zynga Mobile UK in April 2011, but has since also been shut down.

Mobile games... It's a difficult business dontchaknow!

All over

New in-app purchases in all the games have been disabled, although if you have spare currency, you can still spend it.

The apps themselves will be removed from the App Store and Google Play on 1st February, with the backend servers being switched off two months later.

And that's game over

As for ngmoco, it's focused on DeNA's Mobage social gaming network, which has found success with more hardcore fare such as the very lucrative card-battlers Rage of Bahamut and Marvel War of Heroes.

Brutally put, those first generation games haven't been generating cash for over a year, so the business is putting its resources into games that do.

[source: ngmoco via TouchArcade]

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.