The announcement was shared in-game (and posted on Reddit by Avian81). Fans can enjoy all the content the game has to offer from now until shutdown with a special discount: all the items have been reduced to either 1 Gem or 1 Sigil each. All players who log in also receive a free bundle of more than enough Gems and Sigils to purchase any store items they want.
After Seven Years Of Free-To-Play Content
The controversial free-to-play title was released for mobile devices in 2019 and ported to the Switch in 2020. The story takes place between the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and filled in the blanks between the two titles.
The Elder Scrolls: Blades was very different from other games in the series. It didn’t have the franchise’s signature open world and sneaking/stealing mechanics, and was much more combat-heavy. The game was also heavily criticized for its microtransactions—but with the imminent shutdown, at least fans can enjoy every aspect of the game without being restricted to using real-world money.
The title has an abysmal score on Metacritic, with its Metascore at 42 and a Generally Unfavorable User Score of 2.8. Despite all this, the game got over 1 million downloads in its first week of release on iOS, and more on Android.
Fans Have Mixed Feelings
Many Wish It Would Simply Go Offline
The shutdown of The Elder Scrolls: Blades will completely remove the game from mobile devices and the Switch. This means that players who put hundreds of hours into the title will no longer have access to it as of June 30, 2026.
For many, the real solution is obvious: Bethesda should simply make the game available offline. The chances of it were slim, but many fans were hoping that the company would do something similar to Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp shutdown, which made a non-microtransaction “Complete” version available when the game went offline.
Sadly, it seems that The Elder Scrolls: Blades is fated to disappear the way many other online-only free-to-play games have in recent years. As Reddit user Vavavavaxon7 puts it, Blades is “Another game lost to the sands of time for no reason.“