April 30th 2023 saw the end-of-service (EOS) announcement of Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS (hereafter ‘SIFAS’), a rhythm action RPG that shut down on June 30th 2023 for both the Japan (JP) and Global (GL) servers. This followed the shutdown of Love Live! School Idol Festival (hereafter ‘SIF1’), a pure rhythm game, for both the JP and GL servers on March 31st 2023. Around that time, Love Live! School Idol Festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE! (hereafter ‘SIF2’), the successor to SIF1, was released to JP players on April 15th 2023, with a global release coming in 2023.
From ambitious beginnings, SIFAS has fallen by the wayside. Behind a flawed game design and mismanagement by KLab, MyNet Games and Bushiroad, the game experienced declines in player counts and revenues in both the JP and GL servers. Having written four blog posts on the decline of SIFAS, I thought it fitting to provide a final update of the last few months of SIFAS, and what motivated the shutdown of the game.
A final update on player counts
Surprisingly, after the constant falls in player counts over the last 6 months of 2022, player counts have stabilised or even improved slightly in the first 3.5 months of 2023.
In the first three months of 2023, the JP server had around 46,000 players for item exchange (itex) events in the first half of each month and around 45,000 players for story events in the second half of each month. After the 3.5 year anniversary period (blue region), April 2023 saw a small decline of around 1,000 players for the itex event, but a massive fall by 5,000 players (or around 11% of the player base) for the story event. These declines in player counts occurred even before the EOS announcement.
After the EOS announcement, both itex and story events experienced massive falls in player counts in May 2023. In the JP server, there was a 16% decline in player counts for itex events from 45,279 to 38,162 players. Similarly, for story events, there was a 10% decline in player counts from 40,759 to 36,506 players.
In the GL server, player counts increased slightly in the first four itex events, rising from 15,731 players in January 2023 to 16,497 players in April 2023. For story events, player counts stabilised around 15,000 in January and February 2023 before increasing by 1,000 players to 16,089 players in March 2023.
Similar to the JP server, even before the EOS announcement, we saw a 10% decline in player counts in the GL server for the April 2023 story event, decreasing to 14,534 players. After the EOS announcement, there were massive falls in player counts in the GL server in May 2023. Player counts for the itex event decreased by 17% to 13,755 players. The decline in player counts for story events was smaller than the JP server, only decreasing by 6% to 13,670 players.
Both the JP and GL servers experienced alarming declines in player counts even before the EOS announcement, and decreased even more afterwards. These results indicate that even the stabilising player counts could not save the game. Bushiroad decided in advance that SIF2 would replace both SIF1 and SIFAS, owing to the declines in player counts in both games over 2022.
A final update on revenues
2023 continued to see a trough in revenues in the JP server. The game hovered around 100 million JP Yen in January 2023 before falling below that mark for the rest of the game’s lifespan. Not even the 3.5-year anniversary celebrations (which occurred in March 2023) could restore SIFAS’ revenues back to 100 million JP Yen. Matching the declines in player counts in April 2023, we saw a massive fall in JP revenues to 66.3 million JP Yen, the lowest monthly revenue ever generated by SIFAS. The massive fall in revenues appeared even before SIFAS’ EOS announcement.
Comparing SIFAS’ shutdown to other games managed by MyNet Games
In part 3 of the ‘Decline of SIFAS’ series, I put forward the benchmark of 2 years, or 24 months, as the benchmark for determining whether mobile games transferred to MyNet Games would survive or be shut down prematurely. That benchmark is consistent with what MyNet Games presented in their financial reports. I explained that a whopping 85% of games are terminated within the first 2 years of MyNet Games’ operations, highlighting that period as one with the highest risk of a shutdown.
Using 2 years (or 24 months) as the benchmark, SIFAS falls below the mark, only lasting 18 months after being transferred from KLab to MyNet Games before being shut down. From looking at the final player count and revenue graphs, it is hard to fathom whether SIFAS would survive to its 4 year anniversary as a result of low player counts and revenues.
How Bushiroad killed SIFAS
For most of part 3 of the ‘Decline of SIFAS’ series, I described how the transfer of SIFAS to MyNet Games does not bode well for the game’s future. At the same time, I also described how Bushiroad can contribute to SIFAS’ further decline and eventual downfall. That is because Bushiroad, as the publisher, has the final say on whether SIFAS continues on or is terminated. Bushiroad’s actions over the past few months can be seen as them wanting to rapidly move SIF1 and SIFAS players in both JP and GL to SIF2.
The major sign of SIFAS’ imminent shutdown came when the main story was rushed. The main story consisted of six seasons of content. The first three seasons, lasting from September 2019 to September 2022, lasted 9-11 chapters each, with new chapters being released monthly. These are divided by intermission sections that lasted 1-2 chapters, allowing each season to last a year.
However, the last three seasons were very short and crammed in between October 2022 and May 2023 without any intermissions. Season 4 (in green) lasted from October to December 2022, with 3 chapters being released monthly. After the last chapter of season 4, season 5 (in blue) started right away, with 4 chapters being released monthly from January to April 2023. By the time of the EOS announcement, season 6 (in purple) was started, with the remaining 3 chapters crammed within a month. Ironically, if those chapters had been released monthly, there would have been enough main story content to tide SIFAS along until July 2023, meaning the game would have been shut down by the end of August 2023.
There were other red flags indicating that SIFAS was going to be shut down:
- In mid-April 2023, Voltage Ranking songs for itex events were announced for May 2023 but not June 2023. Other similar notices would normally announce 2 months’ worth of Voltage Ranking songs. This indicated that SIFAS would be shut down around June 2023.
- The reduced emphasis on new game modes and the increased reliance on existing game modes became apparent when MyNet Games introduced voltage ranking campaigns in mid-April 2023, a few days before the EOS announcement. MyNet Games did not introduce any new game modes or improved gameplay that kept the game fresh throughout its whole management period.
- There was never any intention from Bushiroad to run SIFAS alongside SIF2. Not only did Bushiroad plan SIFAS’ shut-down in advance despite stabilising player counts in 2023, but they also made the point clear in the EOS notice:
“We regret to inform you that on June. 30, 2023 16:00 JST, we will be discontinuing the service for ‘Love Live! School Idol Festival All Stars’. With this, the ‘Love Live! School Idol Festival’ series of apps will be consolidated into ‘Love Live! School idol festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE!’.” (emphasis added)
The irony of shutting down SIFAS
As previously mentioned, Bushiroad had enough main story content to prolong the availability of SIFAS to August 2023, when it would be shut down. This implied that Bushiroad wanted to move SIFAS players onto the global version of SIF2 as quickly as possible around mid-July 2023 or the beginning of August 2023.
However, the rush to release remaining SIFAS content before its shutdown was unneeded because as of Anime Expo 2023, there was no official date of when SIF2 would be released worldwide. Bushiroad could have taken its time to release the remaining chapters of the main story monthly. By keeping SIFAS open for a longer period of time, it would buy time for the SIF2 developers to optimise the game for a global audience. Without SIFAS, there is no momentum to direct global SIF1 and SIFAS players to SIF2, where they would be lost to other mobile games. This would make it difficult to bring Love Live players back together to SIF2 when it eventually releases globally, presenting a massive lost opportunity for Bushiroad.
Conclusion
This blog post marks the sad end of SIFAS, and the conclusion of the ‘Decline of SIFAS’ series. Under both KLab and MyNet Games’ management, SIFAS has seen declines in both its revenue and player counts, with no recovery in sight.
There were many problems that have plagued SIFAS over its lifetime. The flawed game design tried to straddle the RPG and rhythm game genres without being good at either of them. This was made worse by the controversial season 2 story, stagnant gameplay and pay-to-win mechanics that neither KLab nor MyNet Games fixed. KLab also saw SIFAS as a ‘dead weight’ that did not live up to its potential, prompting its sell-off to MyNet Games. What prematurely ended SIFAS; though, was Bushiroad moving too quickly to get players to play SIF2 when it was not yet ready for a global audience.
The ‘Decline of SIFAS’ blog series provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a game with a flawed design is released to the world, and problems are not responded to right away to keep players in the game. Given the mad rush by game developers and publishers to release mobile and live service games, the story of SIFAS’ downfall is timely indeed.
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