Blue Protocol’s western release has been cancelled and its Japanese servers will shut down early next year

Blue Protocol is a Bandai Namco-developed anime MMO which released in Japan last year, and was meant to arrive in the west at some point this year courtesy of Amazon Games. Alas, that’s no longer the case – and the game is also shutting down in Japan early next year.

“Today, Bandai Namco Online announced that they have made the difficult decision to end service on Blue Protocol. They will shut down their Japanese Blue Protocol servers in January 2025, and have ended plans to release the game in the West in collaboration with Amazon Games,” says the announcement from last week.

The Japanese servers will be shut down on January 18th, 2025. As of today, the game has been delisted from Steam.

Outwardly, Blue Protocol seemed to be following closely in the footsteps of Genshin Impact, with a world of blue skies, green grass, and Breath Of The Wild-style enemies to bash through action-RPG combat. Ed wasn’t sure there was anything more to it beyond that when he had a chance to play it last year, calling it predictable, describing its world as “eh”, and fretting over the inevitable microtransactions.

Still, it’s a shame we won’t get a chance at a proper play of it – and even more so that it’s shutting down for those players who were already invested. Bandai Namco say that they’re not offering refunds for players who already spent real money on in-game Rose Orbs currency, but they’ll be handing out 5000 free Rose Orbs every month between now and January for players to spend on in-game cosmetics. That sucks.

There’s apparently still some new content to come to the Japanese version of the game before it closes down, and its developers have put together a schedule for the remaining months here.