Dangaronpa-like announces closure after less than three months

I’m genuinely heartbroken to report this, but Akatsuki Games has just announced that Tribe Nine is going into end of service. After years of development, this incredibly unique gacha RPG launched on February 20, 2025, bringing the vibrant, pixelated city of Neo Tokyo to light.

From the mind of Kodaka (the creator of the Danganronpa games) and developed by Too Kyo Games and Akatsuki Games, Tribe Nine follows the story of Yo Kuronaka and his friends as they battle against the cartoonishly evil ZERO and his group of NUMBERS, challenging a series of deadly games including – but not limited to – extreme baseball.

After an incredibly successful beta (which you can read about in my Tribe Nine preview), the game saw a slightly rocky launch earlier this year, as players were initially put off by Tribe Nine’s steep gacha rates and the apparent ‘bait and switch’ that saw much of the free currency from the beta sapped away in the full release.

However, the devs listened to feedback and quickly turned the game around, offering far more free-to-play currency, refunding premium currency, and making the gacha rates far more generous. Unfortunately, it looks like the rates were a little too generous, as the game’s reported revenue shrank a dramatic amount over the following months. This drastic decline in profit also bred fear among players, who began to feel like there was little use in spending on a game that’s already likely on life support.

Despite all this, Tribe Nine quickly grew a niche but incredibly dedicated community, and with the first major Tribe Nine update dropping last month, I couldn’t help but hope that we’d at least see it stick around for a year or two. The story is genuinely intriguing, and I was so excited to see what happened next, plus I was super eager to collect any upcoming Tribe Nine characters (especially my beloved Fucho Sonoda – I might’ve had to dolphin for him, honestly).

Alas, my dreams of building the most broken Fucho in Neo Tokyo have been dashed, as Akatsuki Games has announced that service for Tribe Nine will be terminated on November 27, 2025 – just over nine months after its launch. Almost poetic, really.

Alongside this, the announcement also states that there will be no further updates to the game, meaning that we won’t get to see the previously announced Ch. 4 of the story, Ichinosuke and Saizo Akiba won’t be arriving in the game, and none of the new features, adjustments, or known-issue fixes will be implemented.

While the writing was on the wall and the cancellation of gacha games is far from a rarity these days – in fact, just yesterday Square Enix announced that Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link is cancelled – I still can’t help but feel incredibly sad about this one. Tribe Nine truly stuck out in a sea of games like Genshin Impact (as much as I love Genshin), and I had high hopes for the future of the game. This is made even more sad by the lovely responses we got in our Tribe Nine interview, including one about the “unfortunate fear about EOS”.

Luckily, we’ve still got a few months to say our goodbyes to Yo and the gang, and Akatsuki Games has confirmed refunds if you’ve purchased any paid currency for the upcoming characters. I only hope that one day we might see Tribe Nine’s story finished, preferably through a premium offline game, but I’d settle for a manga at the very least.

On the bright side, while I mourn for the loss of another brilliant RPG with so much potential, there are at least plenty of exciting new mobile games on the horizon. We even have a Persona 5 X release date confirmed for next month. Perhaps the Phantom Thieves will be able to fill the Trash Tribe-shaped hole in my heart.