9Multiplayer sword-combat VR simulator Swords of Gargantua is returning to Meta Quest and PC VR storefronts on March 2, marking what Thirdverse describes as a “relaunch” after sunsetting the game last year.
In August 2022, Thirdverse announed that Swords of Gargantua would become unavailable to play from September 30, 2022. The company described the situation as a “service termination,” which would see the game removed from storefronts and become inaccessible to play, even for existing owners wanting to play the game’s single player content. Thirdverse said this was due to “technical and organizational factors impacting the ongoing operations of the game” and noted that all parts of the game, even single player, were dependent on an online connection to the game servers.
A month later in September, Thirdverse announced that Swords of Gargantua would come back online in early 2023 after “online server relocation and additional technical modifications,” with planned support for an offline mode.
Thirdverse announced this week that this “relaunch” of Sword of Gargantua is imminent. The game will be available to play once again on Quest 1, Quest 2, Rift and PC VR platforms from March 2.
In a prepared statement, Thirdverse CBO and Swords of Gargantua Executive Producer Masaru Ohnogi said that the company had “invested substantially” in the game’s relaunch and claimed that the company is “dedicated to [its] longstanding community.”
Offline single player will also now be supported after the game’s relaunch, alongside the standard online co-op modes with support for up to 4 players. Thirdverse says that users who previously owned the game will automatically gain access again on March 2.
UploadVR reached out to Thirdverse to clarify the reasoning behind the relaunch and whether the game could be sunset again in the future. We will update this post if we receive a response.
Update: Thirdverse CBO and Swords of Gargantua Executive Producer Masaru Ohnogi provided UploadVR with the following statement:
“With SWORDS of GARGANTUA, we continued delivering lots of updates for the fans post launch in 2019 – more than 150 updates – and then we made the difficult decision to turn down the game last fall for technical reasons. We’re relaunching the game now because of the dedication of the SWORDS of GARGANTUA community – they really asked for the game to come back with offline mode also supported, so this is really for them and as a way to show our long term dedication to the game and to the continued expansion of the VR market.
We don’t have plans to terminate the service at this moment. We’ve also implemented the offline mode, which the community requested, where all the user’s data can be downloaded to their device, so even if our server is stopped, the game can work as the offline single player game as long as you use the same VR headset.”
