We as a studio have some unfortunate news to share with you today. With all the hard work and love we poured into our first content update, it was with heavy hearts that we had to confront the reality that we don’t have the runway to continue independent development on Crystalfall as a free online live service game. As a result, we will shut down the servers for Crystalfall on 16 July, 2026, though the offline singleplayer version will remain on Steam.
We have included a summary here with all the main points. For more context, continue on reading after the bullet list.
SUMMARY:
The Early Access of Crystalfall as a free online live service game will close its servers on 16 July, 2026
The offline singleplayer version of Crystalfall’s Early Access will remain on Steam as a free to play game.
Those who have Crystalfall added to their Steam Libraries will continue to have access to the offline singleplayer version of the game.
Players have until 16 July, 2026 to download their character progress along with any gained entitlements and purchased microtransactions.
Stash tabs, inventory tabs and cargo tabs will be acquirable in the game with lootable Shards (soft currency).
You will not be able to purchase any in-game Credits (hard currency).
Players who have previously bought in-game Credits (hard currency) can continue to spend them on cosmetics in the offline version. Players have until 16 July, 2026 to save their in-game Credits, along with any gained entitlements and purchased microtransactions to the offline version.
The Founder Packs will be removed from sale in the game, on our webshop, and on Steam.
The offline singleplayer version of Crystalfall will not have in-game trading or leaderboards.
Plans for additional hotfixes and patches are for now discontinued and CRG Studio will not be available for game support.
CRG Studio will continue its operations as a game development studio, exploring opportunities for future development on Crystalfall or other game projects.
Background on Crystalfall
What began as a small core team of ARPG enthusiasts grew into an ambitious indie studio, and we’ll be the first to admit we might have taken on a bit too much too early. Building a systems-heavy ARPG with a small team is in itself a monumental task, but launching and running it as a free online live service game is a beast on its own.
Launching the game in Early Access is in itself a challenge. As a studio, there was really no way around it if we wanted to continue developing Crystalfall to the point where it could realise its full potential in the future. We knew that we couldn’t do that without the help of the community, as balancing a game of this size is near impossible. Releasing Crystalfall as a free-to-play Early Access was a way for us to put the game in your hands, giving you a chance to try it out before choosing to support us with a purchase. But it backfired.
Early Access today is in a different place than it was when we began this journey. The expectations are simply higher than they used to be. We did our best with the time we had to get Crystalfall in a state where we felt it was ready to be put in the hands of the players, but the server provider change that happened so close to our launch put us in a risky position. We really didn’t want to lose the momentum we had going from Steam Next Fest, but we made the difficult decision to delay the launch for a few weeks to give us a chance to test the new infrastructure. But even with our testing, we couldn’t have foreseen the server load we received on the very first seconds of our launch, which caused unexpected issues that took longer than expected to track down.
As a result, our Steam rating tanked, though server issues weren’t the only reason for the negative reviews. In its Early Access state Crystalfall hasn't yet fulfilled its true potential, and feedback centred around lack of content, QoL, performance, and monetization not matching the current quality level of the game. The monetization was there to help us get to that quality level, but we realise now that it might have been better to style our Founder Packs as a Kickstarter instead, and to have offered more in-game options to unlock storage space. In the end we aren’t really doing things so fundamentally different from other live service games, but we were judged more harshly for it due to the game not yet being as polished. It’s a tough situation all in all, and we really did our best to remedy it and address all the feedback and concerns for our content update on June 4th.
Despite receiving good feedback on our new patch, which got us up to Mixed Recent Reviews, we as a studio have reached a point where we don’t have the runway to continue independent development on Crystalfall as a free online live service game.
As a result, we have decided to close down the servers for the online version after 30 days, while keeping the offline singleplayer version on Steam. This way, players will have time to download their character progress, along with any gained entitlements and purchased microtransactions for the offline version.
For now, any plans to release additional hotfixes and patches for the game have been discontinued, and as a studio we will not be able to provide any game support for the foreseeable future. Our hotfix today will implement changes to the shop while also addressing some of the issues that have been reported on the new content patch. Check the patch notes at the end of this announcement.
Despite freezing development on Crystalfall, CRG Studio will continue operating as a game development studio. We have a strong team with a burning passion for developing games, and we’ve created many complex game systems and lots of content over the years. With the experience and insight we have gained throughout this journey, we will continue exploring opportunities for future development on Crystalfall or other game projects.
We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has supported and followed us on this journey. Watching you play and figure out the mechanics of the game, seeing the builds you cook up, how you support each other and build bonds in the community, the content and the memes and inside jokes you’ve shared - that has been a tremendous joy for us and is what made the process of building Crystalfall so fun for our team.
There are many things we wish we could have done differently, but we can honestly say that we’ve done everything we could with the time and resources we had. Everyone says that building a game is hard, but building an ARPG with endless replayability is harder, and building an online ARPG with endless replayability is even harder. We did our best, and we will do our best to continue.
Thank you for playing Crystalfall, for helping us improve the game, for supporting us, and for being an amazing community.
We wish you all the best, to keep on rocking, to stay awesome, and as always…
…may the loot be with you!
Much love,
CRG Studio.
Hotfix 6
Balancing
Loot filter updated
Level cap increased to 75
Message warning when crafting items looted before the patch
Fixed prison and tutorial entrances that stopped working when entering and exiting
Fixed an issue where all interactions become very hard to hit
Fixed duplicate affix during crafting
24h vendor refresh
Loot drop table updated with missing skills (the new 4 skills)
Made shop available in offline mode
Removed “waiting/loading server” text in loading screen
Cloud save for offline mode
Download online character to offline
How to download your online characters for offline play:
Start the game in online mode
Click the “download characters” button in your character list.
Keep in mind that by accepting this you'll overwrite any current offline data.