Harry Potter: Magic Awakened to close operations in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania on October 29, 2024

As a lifelong Harry Potter enthusiast who has spent countless hours immersed in the magical world J.K. Rowling created, hearing about the closure of Harry Potter: Magic Awakened in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania feels like a spell that’s backfired spectacularly. It’s as if Dumbledore himself has taken away my wand!

It’s been announced that the card-collecting role-playing game, Harry Potter Magic Awakened, will cease its server operations across the Americas, Europe, and Oceania on October 29, 2024. The game was removed from both the App Store and Google Play on August 26, 2024, meaning new downloads are no longer available.

Harry Potter: Magic Awakened will still be in operation in Asia and the MENA regions

During NetEase Games’ Annual Product Launch in 2020, Harry Potter: Magic Awakened was one of the four games revealed. This game started its official release in China in September 2021. Pre-registrations for the global version were opened in February 2022. Due to some delay in the release process, it entered early access in certain regions in April of last year before its worldwide launch on June 27, 2023.

The popular game “Harry Potter: Magic Awakened” will cease its operations in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania regions as of October 29, 2024. It will no longer be available for download from app stores starting August 26, 2024. For more information, please visit [the provided link].
— HPMagicAwakened (@hpmagicawakened) August 26, 2024

After finishing its first year, the news that Harry Potter: Magic Awakened will be closing down has been a surprise. It’s likely that this decision to shut down in certain areas is due to the game not performing as well as anticipated financially in those regions. To clarify, the game generated only $3.1 million in revenue and was downloaded 3.5 million times during its first three weeks of global release, with half of the earnings coming from the U.S. market.

The game shutdown pertains only to players residing in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania. However, it’s business as usual for gamers in Asia, which includes mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and other Asian territories not specified yet, as well as regions like the Middle East and North Africa, whose distribution is managed by NetEase. In summary, if you are from these regions, you can still download and enjoy the game.

As mentioned earlier, the shutdown of servers will happen on the 29th of October in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania so if you are in these regions, you will no longer be able to access the game after this date. At the same time, new content updates will stop with the current season, Intercontinental Wizard Cup, which will end on September 17, 2024.

Harry Potter: Magic Awakened to close operations in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania on October 29, 2024

As a longtime devotee of this series, given my deep-rooted fondness for the Harry Potter universe since childhood, learning about this development is quite disheartening. Frankly, Harry Potter: Magic Awakened had immense promise, but it seemed that its potential was not met from the get-go, with proper management lacking. I can only hope a worthy successor will emerge within the HP franchise in the future.

2024-08-27 11:11