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Steam MMO Zenith: Nexus is shutting down, with December 18 officially set as its discontinuation date. Apart from Steam, the game is also ceasing operations on several other platforms.
Developed by San Francisco-based Ramen VR (incorporated as TribeVR Inc.), the title originally launched in January 2022 as an anime open-world VR MMO Zenith: The Last City before undergoing a major restructuring in 2024. Rather than replacing the original experience, Ramen VR reorganized it into Zenith: Nexus, a VR-only title containing two separate game modes. The newly introduced Zenith: Infinite Realms became its free-to-play entry point, offering a more traditional, session-based action RPG built around procedural co-op runs, while the original Zenith: The Last City continued as the game’s open-world MMO mode and was sold as paid DLC.
Zenith: Nexus Servers Are Going Offline for Good
The Shutdown Is Taking Place in Several Stages
Ramen VR formally announced the Zenith: Nexus shutdown on October 21, saying that the game’s servers will remain online until 10:00 AM PST on Friday, December 18. The move is absolute and permanent, with the Californian developer saying its live-service game will no longer be accessible in any shape or form once the servers go offline. In preparation for the move, Ramen VR says it opted to end sales of The Last City DLC and the Zennies premium currency ended on October 21. However, the former is still being sold on Steam as of October 22. The free Zenith: Nexus client will remain available to new players until November 18, while existing players will be able to continue playing and spend their remaining Zennies until the final closure.
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What Went Wrong for Zenith?
Elaborating on the reasons for the closure, Ramen VR said it is no longer feasible to keep operating the Zenith servers at a loss. That endpoint follows a launch that initially looked much more durable. In March 2022, Ramen VR said Zenith had become the No. 1-selling game on Steam overall, rather than just SteamVR, while also topping the Oculus Rift and Quest charts and ranking among the best-selling PlayStation VR releases. The studio said hundreds of thousands of people had experienced its anime MMO, its development costs had already been recouped, and the project was profitable. That early momentum also helped Ramen VR close a $35 million Series B funding round less than two months after launch.
In the end, the much harder challenge was keeping those players engaged beyond 2022. Ramen VR later said hundreds of thousands of people had tried Zenith, but the vast majority stopped playing after roughly a month, and years of work had failed to meaningfully improve player retention, a challenge that many MMOs eventually face regardless of budget or early success. The American studio responded by restructuring the game around the free Zenith: Nexus client and Infinite Realms, but in July 2024 it announced that new content development would end. The final major update, Season 4: Golden Isles, arrived the following month, after which Ramen VR kept the servers online without continuing active development.
Steam(VR) is only one of the platforms affected by the December 2026 closure. Ramen VR currently lists Zenith for Meta Quest 2, Quest 3, Rift, and PlayStation VR2, and the shutdown announcement applies to the game’s servers across all platforms. On Sony’s virtual reality hardware, the current PS5 release requires PS VR2 and online play. The older Quest 1 and original PS VR versions are a separate case, as Ramen VR already ended access on those headsets on November 6, 2024.
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December 18, 2021
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