Mirage: Arcane Warfare is being removed from Steam due to GDPR regulations

Mirage: Arcane Warfare, the fantasy follow up to Torn Banner Studio's insanely popular Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, is about to be shut down for good thanks to new European Privacy laws coming into effect today, May 25, 2018. Thankfully, Chivalry will not be affected.

Yesterday, Torn Banner released a statement on their forums announcing that the game was being removed from Steam and all third-party retailers and the multiplayer servers would be shut off on May 31. The reason, the post explains, is due to General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), a stricter enforcement of privacy laws in Europe that is creating trouble for more than just games.

The issue is that becoming compliant with these new regulations is expensive for small developers. In the case of Loadout, another game that is shutting down because of GDPR, it would require implementing new features that the company couldn't afford. It appears Torn Banner is in a similar situation with Mirage: Arcane Warfare.

If you've been following this spiritual successor to Chivalry: Medieval Warfare at all, that's hardly surprising. Despite our positive review, Mirage never found a stable audience—a death sentence for a multiplayer-only game. Shortly after release, its servers were a ghost town with maybe a dozen players at any one time. A promotion that gave the game away for free brought in an estimated million players, but again they didn't stick around. Mirage just doesn't have the same gory appeal that Chivalry does.

While it's unclear if Torn Banner were working on any other hail marys to save Mirage, it doesn't matter now. "We unfortunately have run out of options for keeping Mirage alive," the studio said in a statement.

"Thank you for your support and for enjoying Mirage’s journey up to now. We look forward to seeing you in our future titles. Our other games, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior, will not be affected."