On July 9, 2026, Aether Gazer’s producer Awei released an open letter to players. After the V5.2 update on July 23, the game will cease all new content development and transition into “Companion Server” mode — servers stay online, account data remains intact, but there will be no more new characters, main story chapters, or events.
After more than four years of operation, this action RPG from Chinese developer Yongshi Network has reached its end.
When it launched on April 22, 2022, it became one of the month’s top-grossing new releases. Four years later, it bows out with a “no more updates, but servers stay online” approach. What happened in between is worth a closer look.
Launch and Peak
Aether Gazer launched on April 22, 2022. Building on the reputation Yongshi Network had built with Azur Lane and positioning itself as a “hardcore anime-style ARPG,” the game quickly climbed the best-seller charts in its first month.
As Yongshi Network’s second self-developed and self-published title, Aether Gazer accounted for the majority of the company’s revenue in 2022. According to financial reports, the game contributed approximately 228 million RMB in revenue that year, representing 65% of the company’s total annual revenue. Yongshi Network saw significant growth in both revenue and profits that year.
Back then, everything seemed on track.
Decline and Turning Point
The turning point came in 2023. Once the game settled into its regular operation phase, revenue began to drop sharply. Domestic income declined significantly, and while the Japanese server launched overseas, its contributions weren’t enough to offset the domestic losses. In 2023, the company’s revenue fell by nearly 20% year-over-year, with net profit declining by close to 30%.
2024 was even worse, with profits cut in half. In 2025, the overseas publisher exited, and Yongshi Network took over distribution themselves — but by then, the game was already in the later stages of its lifecycle. Revenue continued to decline, a far cry from its peak.
The suspension notice finally arrived in July 2026.
The Transition Plan
V5.2 will be the final major update. The last new character will be “Xingyi·Daguozhu” — no more new units will be added after that.
The transition package announced by the developers includes: a server-wide compensation gift featuring 90 pulls and a free selector for one character of your choice, a refund channel for unused premium currency, and the “Companion Server” mode, which will adjust banner rotations, resource drops, and event structures to suit a no-new-content operation state.
In addition, the latter half of the Dahuang arc’s main story — The Human World — is still scheduled for release in the second half of 2026, though it won’t include full stage production or voice acting. Producer Awei stated in his open letter that this was to avoid leaving the main storyline “cut in half,” giving the narrative a relatively complete ending.
The servers will remain online — this was explicitly emphasized in the announcement. Players can still log in, and all existing characters, gear, and save data will remain.
Why Did Aether Gazer Suspend Updates?
The suspension of Aether Gazer wasn’t an accident — it was the inevitable result of a structural shift in the entire anime-style game sector.
When it launched in 2022, “3D anime-style action RPG” was still a relatively niche category. Aether Gazer capitalized on Yongshi Network’s reputation and the hardcore ARPG positioning to capture the early wave of market demand.
But by 2026, the space had become extremely crowded. Punishing: Gray Raven had long established itself, Wuthering Waves had snatched a large user base with higher production values, and Zenless Zone Zero had raised the quality bar even further through miHoYo’s industrialized development pipeline. As the bar for top-tier products kept rising, the window for mid-tier games kept shrinking. Aether Gazer didn’t necessarily get worse — its competitors simply got better, and it didn’t have the resources to keep up.
At the same time, major publishers flooded the market with massive user acquisition spending, making it nearly impossible for smaller studios to compete. miHoYo, Tencent, and NetEase continued to pour billions into the anime-style game space, driving customer acquisition costs through the roof. For studios like Yongshi Network, scaling back meant losing users, while keeping up meant operating at a loss — both outcomes were unsustainable.
Producer Awei admitted in his letter that “the game’s market performance failed to meet expectations.” That wasn’t humility — it was a statement of fact.
What Does This Mean for Existing Players?
Looking at the broader industry picture, Aether Gazer’s suspension is far from an isolated case. In 2025 alone, over 20 anime-style games in China announced service terminations or content halts. Based on publicly available notices, more than 28 games had already announced suspensions or service terminations in the first half of 2026 alone. From operational adjustments to outright shutdowns, the pace of departures in the anime-style game sector is accelerating — and that’s no coincidence.
The overall market is shrinking in tandem. According to the 2025 China Game Industry Report, domestic anime-style mobile game revenue reached 28.28 billion RMB in 2025, down 3.64% year-over-year — the second consecutive year of decline. The market is contracting, yet the number of exiting titles is increasing.
The anime-style game market is undergoing a brutal consolidation. In 2024, 20 anime-style titles made it into the iOS top-grossing chart’s top 10, eight of which were new releases that year. By 2025, that number fell to 14, with only one new title making the cut. The top positions are now firmly occupied by established giants — miHoYo, Papergames, Hypergryph, Kuro Games — leaving mid-sized studios caught in a bind: squeezed by the production quality of top-tier titles while struggling with rising acquisition costs.
What Happens After Aether Gazer Suspends Updates?
Compared to many other games that shut down, Aether Gazer’s handling of its end-of-service is relatively considerate — it’s transitioning into “Companion Server” mode rather than outright shutting down, while also opening a refund channel for unused premium currency.
Keeping the servers online at least allows the game to retain a core player base. Whether they want to revisit the IP in the future or explore potential licensing opportunities, they’ve left the door open. For Yongshi Network, the suspension of Aether Gazer means losing its biggest revenue driver over the past four years. Where its next product will come from remains to be seen.
But at the very least, Yongshi Network got one thing right: they didn’t shut down abruptly, and they gave players a dignified farewell.
The anime-style game market isn’t dying. It’s simply becoming a market where only the strongest projects survive.
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