Niantic Inc., developer of the extremely popular “Pokemon Go” augmented reality game, announced Tuesday that its “Harry Potter: Wizard’s Unite” AR game would be shutting down on Jan. 31, 2022.

The company announced in a blog post and FAQ that it would be pulling the game from the App Store, Google Play and the Galaxy Store on December 6, 2021, and that players would no longer be able to make in-game purchases.

The company didn’t give a specific reason as to why it is shutting down the game but instead issued heartfelt comments about the vision of its game and a wistful look back at its history.

“Not all games are meant to last forever. Our goal with ‘Harry Potter: Wizards Unite’ was to bring the magic of the wizarding world to life for millions of players as they stepped outside and explored their neighborhoods,” the Niantic team said in a statement. “We accomplished that together, delivering a two-year narrative story arc that will soon complete.”

The “Wizard’s Unite” game launched initially into early access in June 2019, but it lacked the same popularity of “Pokemon Go,” which to this day still pulls in considerable revenue for the company – in spite of being launched in 2016.

According to a report from Sensor Tower, “Pokemon Go” surpassed $5 billion lifetime revenue from player spending as the title celebrated its five-year anniversary in July. This showed that the game generated approximately $1 billion on average each year and still continues to be the clear leader in geolocation AR globally.

In spite of the popular effect of “Pokemon Go” on mobile AR, there hasn’t been a killer mobile hit in the AR scene since, despite numerous different games being released. In fact, there have been several other games shut down since, including Microsoft Corp.’s voxel-based “Minecraft Earth,” which shuttered in June, and Niantic’s own “Catan: World Explorers” AR game shutting down this month.

In fact, Niantic has continued ahead with a brand-new release with “Pikmin Bloom,” based on the popular Pikmin series involving cute alien flower creatures, and the company partnered with Hasbro Inc. to launch a Transformers-branded AR game.

In order to reward players of “Wizard’s Unite” for their participation, Niantic has provided a number of gameplay boosts (outlined in a FAQ) that will greatly increase experience gain and increase the frequency of events. As a result, even as the game approaches its sunset, players will be able to experience much of the game’s content even if they had missed it before.

Although the game will be removed from all stores on Dec. 6, it will remain playable until the servers shut down on Jan. 31.

Image: Warner Bros.