Mojang calls a halt to Scrolls development

Minecraft developer Mojang has decided to stop producing content for card battler Scrolls.

A Scrolls expansion called Echoes launched on June 9, and has now been confirmed as the last content drop.

"We won’t be adding features or sets from now on, though we are planning to keep a close eye on game balance," Mojang wrote on the Scrolls website.

Although the project's beta launch was a "great success" with "tens of thousands of players" battling daily, at present Scrolls is not self-sustaining.

"The game has reached a point where it can no longer sustain continuous development," Mojang said.

You can still buy Scrolls, and all proceeds will be rolled into maintaining servers. Mojang has promised to keep servers up and running "until at least July 1st, 2016".

"We’ve had a great time working on Scrolls, and appreciate every last player who’s downloaded our game. Extra big thanks to the most dedicated members of our community; some of you have logged in almost every day since release and dedicated a large portion of your time to dominating the leaderboards and taking care of new players," Mojang wrote.

"We salute you, honourable scrolldiers. We will do our best to answer any questions you might have on the standard channels."

Sad news, but the world's quite a different place to when Scrolls went into beta back in June 2013. Blizzard's Hearthstone has become a phenomenon, creating (but thoroughly absorbing) vast new audiences for card battlers and even inspiring imitators. Microsoft purchased Mojang, apparently just because it could, but likely with an eye focused solely on the incredible success of Minecraft.