The scramble to patch a newly revealed set of critical PHP vulnerabilities has claimed two long-running Japanese games. World Quest, a virtual travel game with roughly 15 years of history, and the mobile fantasy simulation RPG Please Save My Pandemonium! have both ended service with no warning, saying their old server setups could not be fixed safely.
Two sudden goodbyes
World Quest went first. In a post on its official account on October 21, the team said a serious vulnerability had been found in PHP, the language its servers run on, and that because the game’s systems were so old, it could not put adequate protections in place. To protect players’ information, it ended the service that same day and apologized for the sudden notice.
Hours later, the team behind Please Save My Pandemonium! made a similar announcement, saying it had become too difficult to respond to the PHP vulnerabilities and thanking fans who had played for more than ten years. As Automaton reports, developer JAGS said the game ran on significantly outdated infrastructure, and moving it to a modern environment was not realistic, so it chose to shut down rather than risk user data.
World Quest had been through this once before. Automaton notes it first shut down in 2019, then came back in 2020 to give people a way to travel virtually while stuck at home during the pandemic.
A wider shake-up
PHP is used across a huge share of the web, and the disclosure sent many services into emergency maintenance this week. PC Gamer reports that GOG took its store and GOG Galaxy launcher offline for about four hours on October 21 before returning. In Japan, Automaton says big games such as Umamusume: Pretty Derby and Granblue Fantasy also went into emergency maintenance and have been gradually coming back.
It has already been a rough month for Umamusume fans, after Cygames canceled its Los Angeles concerts over US visa issues. For World Quest and Please Save My Pandemonium! players, though, there is no comeback date this time. Both teams say the shutdowns are permanent.
