Even as NCsoft prepares to launch their long awaited (and already best selling) MMO Aion next week, the company has announced that it will be shutting down another of their MMO games. This time it's Dungeon Runners, the fantasy themed game that was the publisher's entry in the "free-to-play" genre.

Launched in 2006, the game suffered setbacks last year when NCsoft reorganized and drastically cut the development team that was in charge of running the game. However the bottom line, according to the game's producer and lead programmer Stephen Nichols is, "The game just isn't profitable." Therefore he announced on the Dungeon Runners web site that the game will shut down its online servers. It's last full day of operations will be on New Year's Eve of 2009.

Current Dungeon Runners players who decided to use the game's optional subcription service will be compensated with a 30 day code and digital copies of City of Heroes and Guild Wars Prophecies. And the game itself will have lots of events and bonuses from now until the shut down including "adding a huge nuke to Townston that will blow up on New Year's and take the game down with it." We love nukes!.

[Via Massively]