FF7 Ever Crisis Shutdown Leaves Before Crisis Unplayable

Square Enix is ending service for Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis on October 6, taking the mobile-only gacha and its exclusive remake of the Japan-only prequel Before Crisis offline for good. The shutdown means the first official English version of Before Crisis will be lost again, after only a handful of chapters were released.

Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII originally launched in 2004 for Japanese feature phones and never left Japan. A turn-based action-RPG starring the Turks set six years before FF7, it’s been part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII but has never been playable on modern hardware. No functional emulation exists. Ever Crisis was finally bringing it to the West, chapter by chapter, alongside remakes of the broader FF7 saga. The end of service scraps that effort halfway through.

Whether Square Enix salvages the Before Crisis chapters as a standalone download, as it did with some past mobile titles, remains to be seen. For now, a canon chunk of FF7 history is about to disappear again.