Studiobside’s subculture RPG CounterSide has announced a halt to all future updates. It is essentially the beginning of the end for the title, with many interpreting this as a slow march toward a full service shutdown.

The news broke on the 24th via the official CounterSide community. In a notice, Live PD Kim Hyun-soo stated, "I will be stepping down from my role as CounterSide PD after this April," adding that, "The Mainstream 15 content added on the 22nd, along with a new Awakened Employee arriving on the 29th, will mark the final updates for the game."

With the content updates coming to a halt, the operational model is shifting as well. Aside from Gauntlet, Ranked Battle Support, Exclusive Gear Challenges, and World Map Raids, all other content reruns are effectively suspended. Furthermore, certain monetization items, such as the 30-day currency supply contract, will be pulled, and existing content will rotate on a loop.

The final Awakened character arriving on the 29th will be released without a promotional trailer and will be distributed for free rather than locked behind a gacha pull. Players can max out the character to tier 6 by completing specific missions and wrapping up the final narrative chapters.

The developers bid their farewells, stating, "We will never forget the countless values we learned while crying and laughing together to build CounterSide," and added, "We are sincerely grateful for the support and love you have sent us until now." The player base expressed their sadness, with comments such as "I can't believe CounterSide is ending like this," "It had its issues around the first anniversary, but it improved so much by the second; my heart is breaking," and "My world has collapsed."