Bandai Namco has announced that Shonen Jump-themed arena fighter Jump Force will be ending service next year, along with the game’s delisting from digital storefronts.

In a Tweet, they said that they would be ending sales of “Full-sales, DLC and Virtual currency” for the title on February 8th, 2022. Considering the Ultimate Edition is only available online, this means that DLC characters will be lost after the game gets delisted.

In addition, the game’s online services will also be terminated on August 25th of 2022. While this will disable the game’s ranked mode, in the notice given they’ve said you’ll still be able to connect for unranked matches online.

“Our sincere thanks goes out to all Jump Force players and fans for their support; but with all good things, they must come to an end “, the farewell tweet says.

Jump Force was an ambitious game- combining various characters published in Shonen Jump into one 3v3 fighters. It saw the likes of Kentaro from Fist of the North Star teaming up with Gon and Yami Yugi, all while engaged in big 3d arenas.

The game also had additional DLC characters, with characters like Seto Kaiba and Giorno Giovanna also joining the roster for the game.

That being said, the game was met with criticism by the greater FGC for its bizarre art style choices, and less-than-satisfying controls to play.

From The Perspective of An FGC Member

While opinions of Jump Force weren’t particularly high, there is something problematic about the game’s delisting. For one, the game never had a physical re-release with its various DLC on-disc. That means if you wanted to organize tournaments for the game, you’d have to make sure you bought all the content you wanted before the delisting.

This is different to re-releases like Street Fighter V Arcade Edition or Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, which contained complete rosters for their games at the time of release. This means if you wanted to start your own small scene for the games, you could welcome virtually any player- you wouldn’t worry about someone complaining they’re a Dizzy main and that she’s not selectable.

Lots of fighting games thrive despite not being readily available- just ask the Marvel vs Capcom 2 community. But part of that hinges on people’s ability to be able to start even the smallest tournament with it if they suddenly decided they wanted to get into the game- which they can’t do if they only heard about the Jojo vs Fist of the North Star game after its demise.