Q-Games and Sony Interactive Entertainment announced in a bi-lingual post on the game’s Japanese site that online service for The Tomorrow Children will end November 1st, 2017. As the game requires these online services to function The Tomorrow Children will be unplayable and Extinct after this date. The statement is sincere, if a bit boilerplate and vague:

“We would like to thank you all for playing The Tomorrow Children up until now. The Tomorrow Children development and operations team would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for taking part and enjoying our title since the service began in September 2016. We want to apologise to all of our users who still continue to enjoy this title and ask for your understanding with the decision to end the service.

There is only a short amount of time remaining, however The Tomorrow Children development and operations team hope that you can all continue to enjoy our title until the end of service. And we would like to extend our thanks and best wishes to you all who continue to enjoy and play our game.”

No further explanation has been given but due to the game’s free-to-play nature and grueling design choices, the decision was most likely made due to low retention of active players. The post also contains a timeline of important dates leading to the end of service starting with the July 6th announcement:

• July 6th, 2017 (Thu) – Service End Announcement (This Announcement)
• July 6th, 2017 (Thu) – “Thank You Sale”, discounted prices on DLC and Freeman Dollars through September 28th.
• September 28th, 2017 (Thu) – Removal of the Founders Pack, and Freeman Dollars from the PlayStation®Store, as well as end of new downloads for the title and special items. Share Play will not be able to play after this date.
• November 1st, 2017 (Wed) 17pm (Japan Team) – End of Service

There’s a good chunk of time left before the game shuts down so if you were ever interested, give it a go. It’s quite a punishing grind to get started (as it should be, given the subject matter) but there really isn’t anything quite like it. If nothing else it’s got a visual style that should be seen first-hand before it’s gone.

The game page is up and relevant dates have been added to the calendar. At least one hands-on video will follow before the game is gone.