Astellia

Lore & Background

Astellia was developed by Korean Studio 8 and first released in Korea in late 2018. Publisher Barunson released the game free-to-play in Korea and buy-to-play in the West, launching in North America in summer 2019. The game is a high fantasy MMORPG featuring a system of collectable summonable companions called Astels, which players could summon to complement their weaknesses or strengthen their own power.

Reader's Guide

Astellia's significance lies in its multiple business model shifts and its early adoption of blockchain technology in the MMORPG genre. After Barunson abandoned the game by April 2020 and returned it to the developer, a new free-to-play version called Astellia Royal was released on Steam in March 2021. Both western versions were terminated in October 2021. The game was then re-released in the West as Astel of Atra in December 2022, a play-to-earn NFT game where Astels became tradeable NFTs stored on the Polygon blockchain. Players could earn cryptocurrency but needed to own an Astel NFT to obtain it. This made it one of the first play-to-earn blockchain/cryptocurrency titles, alongside the Korean MMORPG MIR4. Astel of Atra was shut down on February 10, 2023, and the Korean website appeared to be gone by May 2023. The game's legacy illustrates the volatility of both traditional MMORPG publishing and the early NFT gaming market.

Did You Know?

• Astellia was originally released free-to-play in Korea but buy-to-play in the West.
• The game's Astels were collectable companions that could be summoned to complement a player's weaknesses or strengthen their power.
• Astellia Royal, a free-to-play version, was released on Steam in March 2021.
• The NFT version, Astel of Atra, used the Polygon blockchain and required owning an Astel NFT to earn cryptocurrency.

Game Design & the Astel Companion System

Astellia, occasionally marketed under the name Astellia Online, was a high fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game crafted by the Korean developer Studio 8. At the heart of its design sat the Astel system, a roster of summonable companions that players could deploy to either compensate for their character's vulnerabilities or to magnify areas where they already excelled. These Astels were not one-and-done summons; they were collectible entities within the game world, encouraging players to build and curate a personal lineup over time. This companion-centric architecture distinguished Astellia from many of its MMORPG peers, which typically leaned on real-time party members or guild coordination to balance encounters. By embedding the summon mechanic directly into the core loop, Studio 8 gave solo and small-group players a built-in strategic layer. The title first appeared in Korean in late 2018 and crossed over to North American audiences the following summer, in 2019.

Publishing Strategy & Regional Market Positioning

The business approach to Astellia diverged sharply by region. In its home market of Korea, publisher Barunson made the title available on a free-to-play basis, a model well suited to the region's intensely competitive MMO landscape. In the West, however, the very same game was sold as a buy-to-play product, imposing a steeper upfront barrier that reflected different consumer expectations and revenue strategies in North America. This dual-model approach meant that the Korean and Western player bases experienced the game under fundamentally different economic conditions from the very first session. The Western launch in the summer of 2019 arrived roughly a year after the Korean release in late 2018, granting the Korean community a meaningful head start in shaping early community culture and content expectations. Barunson's role as Western publisher was central to the game's identity abroad, yet that relationship would prove to be remarkably short-lived, setting the stage for a series of ownership changes that would define the title's turbulent post-launch history.

A Churned Publishing History

Astellia's post-launch journey was defined by repeated ownership changes and service interruptions. Barunson, the Western publisher, abandoned the title by April 2020, returning it to developer Studio 8 so the studio could seek a new publishing partner. The game subsequently reappeared as Astellia Royal, a free-to-play edition that landed on Steam in March 2021, signaling an attempt to rebuild a Western audience under a more accessible pricing model. Yet that window proved brief: both Western service versions were terminated in October 2021, less than eight months after the Steam relaunch. The Korean side fared no better, as the game's Korean website appeared to have vanished by May 2023. In total, the title cycled through at least three distinct commercial incarnations—the original release, the Astellia Royal rebrand, and a later repositioning—before all active services wound down. The recurring pattern of a publisher stepping away, a rebrand, and a subsequent shutdown gave Astellia one of the most turbulent publishing histories among Korean MMORPGs of that era.

The Play-to-Earn Rebrand & Broader Context

In December 2022, the game returned to Western markets under an entirely new identity: Astel of Atra, repositioned as an NFT-based title. In this iteration, the Astels—long the game's signature collectible companions—became tradeable non-fungible tokens stored on the Polygon blockchain. A cryptocurrency earning mechanic was layered into gameplay, though players needed to own at least one Astel NFT before they could begin accumulating in-game crypto. This rebrand placed Astel of Atra among the earliest wave of play-to-earn blockchain MMORPGs, a niche that also included the Korean title MIR4 from The Legend of Mir series. The pivot represented a fundamental shift from traditional MMO monetization toward a speculative crypto-economy model, betting that blockchain ownership would drive engagement. The experiment, however, proved remarkably short-lived. Astel of Atra was shut down on February 10, 2023, barely two months after its December 2022 launch, capping a cycle of rebrands that ultimately left the game without an active service in any region.