Minion Rush Is Shutting Down After 13 Years, but Not Disappearing

Gameloft is closing Minion Rush, the endless runner that has been on phones since June 2013. Its own sunset FAQ sets three dates: a farewell event from October 1 to 28, removal from the App Store and Google Play on October 30 along with the end of in-app purchases, and servers off on January 29, 2027. Anyone who keeps the app installed gets to keep playing offline afterwards, without events, leaderboards or cloud saves.

What was announced

Gameloft announced the closure in a sunset FAQ published on the game's own site, which lays out a schedule rather than a single closing date.

A farewell event runs from October 1 to 28, with progression requirements lowered so players can unlock content that was previously locked behind long grinds. On October 30 the game is removed from the App Store and Google Play and in-app purchases are switched off — so that is the last day anyone new can install it, and the last day anyone can spend real money in it.

Servers go down on January 29, 2027. Gameloft's wording is that customer care support ends and the online servers shut down on that day, taking live events, leaderboards, cloud saves and social features with them.

What survives is an offline version. Players who already have the app installed can keep launching it after the servers are gone, playing without any of the online features. Online account data stops being accessible at shutdown, and Gameloft says deletion follows its privacy policy under GDPR and CCPA.

On money, the FAQ is direct: purchases made before the sunset are not refundable except where the law or a platform's own policy requires it. The advice attached to that is to spend whatever in-game currency you are holding before January 29.

What it means for players

Thirteen years is a long run for a mobile game. Minion Rush arrived in June 2013, was rebuilt and relaunched as a "New Generation" version with a new look and new modes, and still carries close to 300,000 ratings on the App Store — this is not a title that quietly failed to find players.

The date that matters most is October 30, not January. After it, the game cannot be downloaded at all, so anyone who wants the offline version later has to install it before then. Reinstalling after that date, or moving to a new phone, will not be possible through the stores.

The second is January 29 for anything you have paid for. Currency, boosts and event progress stop being useful at that moment, and there is no refund route by default. Spending down a balance is the only way to get value out of it.

For everyone else the practical answer is to install it now if the offline runner is worth keeping, and to treat cloud saves as temporary — after January the progress lives on that one device and nowhere else.

What happens next

The farewell event starts on October 1, which is the first visible step, followed by the store removal on the 30th. Between those two dates the game still runs normally.

The open question is what Gameloft means by the offline version in practice — whether it ships as a final update before the servers close or simply becomes what the installed app does when it can no longer reach them. The FAQ describes the outcome without saying which, and that detail decides whether players need to launch the game one more time before January 29.