Augmented-reality firm Niantic is shutting down another of its location-based mobile gaming apps. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the first of a series of collaborations Niantic planned after the success of its Nintendo partnership for Pokémon Go, will cease operations on Jan. 31, 2022, the developer announced on Tuesday.
Niantic did not give a reason for the shutdown, only that it will mark the conclusion to the game's unique narrative and feature an "end to the Calamity." The Calamity is the plot device Niantic used to explain the game's AR mechanics whereby players would seek out and secure magical items that had popped up in the real world.
Wizards Unite launched in June 2019, three years after Pokémon Go, as the first in a planned series of big collaborations between Niantic and established media brands. It was developed in partnership with Warner Bros. and the film production company's Harry Potter-specific gaming subsidiary, Portkey Games. Other titles in Niantic's portfolio include a Transformers game still in development and a Pikmin game with Nintendo that launched just last week.
An app based on the popular German board game Catan was Niantic's other big release ahead of the Pikmin collaboration, but the developer shut it down in September before a planned global launch, citing issues with development. "We're so proud of the game we made, however we got a little too complicated and a little too far from the original Catan game," the company wrote at the time. "The work and knowledge that we learned working on this game is not lost and we're already working hard on more games for the future."
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE