Catan - World Explorers is Shutting Down for Good

There's bad news for fans of Settlers of Catan - the mobile augmented reality game Catan - World Explorers is shutting down for good on iOS and Android.


Published: September 17, 2021 2:11 PM /

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Catan World Explorers shutting down cover

There's bad news for fans of Settlers of Catan -- the augmented-reality game Catan - World Explorers is shutting down on Android and iOS, and it never managed to leave its beta test.

Augmented reality games are a growing sector of the mobile market. Big companies like Niantic have some heavy hitters on the market like Pokemon Go, and smaller indies are cooking up cool things, too, such as Urban Electronic Games' pet pig racing game Tontachi.

Catan - World Explorers was announced a little less than two years ago. The game was a rather puzzling concept at the time, but it also kind of made sense: players could travel the world collecting resources and playing a massive game of Settlers of Catan over several "seasons." Unfortunately, it looks like the majority of us won't get the chance to play it: this quirky AR game is shutting down for good.

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Why Catan - World Explorers is Shutting Down

As best as we can tell, a key factor for the Catan - World Explorers shutdown came down to design challenges as shown in the statement from the developers released earlier today.

"The team originally set out to build a game that turned the world into a CATAN gameboard," read a portion of today's announcement. "We had a vision for trading, harvesting, and building up the world in seasonal play and resetting the board each month, just like you do for each new game you play at home. But trying to adapt such a well-designed board game to a global, location-based Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game was a tough challenge. We’re so proud of the game we made, however we got a little too complicated and a little too far from the original CATAN game. The work and knowledge that we learned working on this game is not lost and we’re already working hard on more games for the future!"

This isn't the first augmented reality game that got a shutdown announcement this year, either. Mojang made the sad announcement that it was closing down Minecraft Earth back in January 2021.

There's one upside to this sad news: players who have any leftover currency can request to transfer it over to Pokemon Go to use it in that game instead. If you still have a hankering for some Catan action, you can buy the classic Settlers of Catan board game on Amazon for a little over $40.

Disclosure: Amazon works with TechRaptor for affiliate partnership, and TechRaptor earns a small commission off purchases made from some links in this article.

Are you disappointed to learn that Catan - World Explorers is shutting down? Do you prefer the video game or tabletop game versions of Settlers of Catan? Let us know in the comments below!

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A photograph of TechRaptor Senior Writer Robert N. Adams.
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One of my earliest memories is playing Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I've had a controller in my hand since I was 4 and I… More about Robert N