The graveyard

The location-based games that shut down

Between 2020 and 2023 the genre lost six significant games — two from the studio that made Pokémon GO, and one built on The Witcher. If you are here because the game you walked around with is gone, this is the honest map of what happened and what is still standing.

Gone, and not coming back

All six were server-based, so switching the servers off ended them completely. There is no offline mode and no community server. Each was checked against the App Store on 16 August 2026 — none of them are listed any more, and neither are Maguss and Parallel Kingdom, whose closures are less precisely dated in public reporting.

Swipe the table sideways to see what each game was →

What is still running

Checked on the stores rather than remembered, because this genre attracts a lot of confident misinformation. Pokémon GO, Ingress, Pikmin Bloom and Jurassic World Alive are all live. So are Turf, Orna, Geocaching and Munzee. Draconius GO, which is widely assumed to be dead, shipped an update in June 2026.

The linked ones above go straight to a full comparison; the rest are in the grid at the foot of this page.

Still on the store is not the same as still being made

A listing stays up long after the work stops, so "it's still on the App Store" answers less than it looks. The last update date answers more, and it is public — just never collected anywhere. So here is every game this site names that has an App Store listing, 27 of them, with the date its publisher last shipped a build. Read from the App Store on 26 August 2026, and re-checked every week.

Oldest first, because that is the end of the list you came for. 4 of the 27 have been quiet for six months or more.

Swipe the table sideways →

Dates are the App Store's currentVersionReleaseDate in UTC. A long gap is a fact, not a verdict — software can be finished, and none of these has announced a shutdown.

None of the quiet ones has announced a shutdown, and none belongs on the closure list further up — that is the point. Nobody will tell you. Check when a game last shipped before investing weeks in it: it is on the store page, and it is the one number nobody games.

Where we fit, and where we don't

BloodRivals claims real addresses: you stand at one, take it, build it up, and it earns while you hold it until somebody takes it off you. The game on this list it overlaps most is Catan: World Explorers — both are about holding real ground and earning from it.

It replaces none of the others. There is no AR camera, no licensed world, nothing to catch and nothing to build in the Minecraft sense. If what you miss is walking with the camera up, this is the wrong app and you should skip it.

And the fair warning, given the subject: we are small, and mostly Norwegian. Every game on the closure list was bigger than us. Nobody told those players their game was fragile — so here is ours, in a number you can check right now.

Free on iOS and Android. No ads. Optional in-app purchases.

Common questions

Can you still play Minecraft Earth or Harry Potter: Wizards Unite?

No. Both were server-based, so when the servers were switched off the apps stopped working entirely — there is no offline mode and no private server. Minecraft Earth closed on 30 June 2021 and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite on 31 January 2022. Neither is on the App Store any more.

Why did so many location-based games shut down?

The publicly stated reasons differ. Mojang pointed at the pandemic making free movement and playing together impossible, which was the whole premise of Minecraft Earth. Niantic said Catan: World Explorers hit a design roadblock it could not solve. What they share is a dependency on crowds: a game that needs many people outdoors in the same place is fragile in a way a single-player game is not.

What happened to The Witcher: Monster Slayer?

It launched in July 2021 and closed in June 2023 — under two years, the shortest run of any game on this list. Like the others it was server-based, so it stopped working entirely rather than becoming a single-player game.

Is BloodRivals a replacement for any of these?

Not really, and it would be dishonest to say otherwise. There is no AR camera, no licensed world, no catching and no building. The one it overlaps most is Catan: World Explorers, because both are about claiming real-world ground and earning from it. If what you miss is wandering with the camera up, this is the wrong app.

What happens if BloodRivals shuts down too?

The same thing, and pretending otherwise would be silly given the list above. It is a small game with a small player base, mostly in Norway. That is worth knowing before you invest months in it — which is exactly what nobody told the people who lost the games on this page.

Read next

• Location-based gamesThe genre, and what is still active in it
• Property gamesBoard, idle and location — three kinds that play nothing alike
• Territory gamesHow claiming and holding real ground works
• GPS gamesBattery, rural coverage and how much walking is really needed
• Pokémon GO alternativesFor catching-game players wanting stakes
• Ingress alternativesTerritory without the coordination overhead
• Turf alternativesGPS capture without the monthly reset
• Atlas Earth alternativesVirtual land other people can take
• Landlord GO alternativesProperty games you have to walk to
• Orna alternativesGPS games with real-world stakes
• Geocaching alternativesWhen you want the ground to be at stake
• GPS running gamesTerritory capture without a pace requirement
• Walking gamesA reason to go out — without a step counter
• Mafia gamesCrime empires from the sofa vs turf you walk to

Pokémon GO, Ingress, Niantic, Scopely, Turf, Andrimon, Atlas Earth, Landlord GO, Get Rent, Reality Games, Monopoly GO!, Monster Hunter Now, Pikmin Bloom, Jurassic World Alive, Orna, Northern Forge, Geocaching, Adventure Lab®, Groundspeak, Munzee, RunStrict, Claim of Zones, Capture, KYRO, Movements Lab, Territory Run, Minecraft Earth, Mojang, Microsoft, Catan, Nerd Ninjas, Ghostbusters, Sony Pictures, FourThirtyThree, The Walking Dead, AMC, Next Games, Draconius GO, Harry Potter, Wizards Unite, WB Games, The Witcher, Spokko, CD Projekt, Maguss, Parallel Kingdom, Run An Empire, Location Games Limited, Father.io, Proxy42, Mafia City, YottaGames, Mob Wars: LCN, Underworld Empire, The Grand Mafia, Turf Wars and MeanFreePath are trademarks of their respective owners. Named across this site only to compare them; no affiliation or endorsement is implied, and nothing on this site is a statement about their earnings, payouts or business practices.