Enjoy your summer of love, LovePlus Every fans, because it’ll be your last.

Dating simulators are a dime a dozen in the Japanese video game industry, and in almost all of them, the story comes to a close once the player and his chosen object of affection confess their feelings to one another. “I…I think I love you…Hanako!” the protagonist says. “Ah! I…I also…” she stammers in response. Cherry blossom petals flutter down from the sacred sakura tree they’re standing under, camera pans up, fade to white, roll credits, “The End.”

But publisher Konami’s LovePlus franchise has a clever way of standing out from the pack by letting you actually play through the happily ever after. Starting with the original LovePlus for the Nintendo DS, the games have no ending: once you form a couple with your girlfriend, you can continue playing indefinitely, going on seasonal dates that align with the in-game calendar for as many virtual years as you want.

▼ Trailer for LovePlus Every

But while true love may be eternal, modern-era “games-as-a-service” smartphone titles are not. Just last October, Konami launched the mobile game LovePlus Every, but the company has already decided to pull the plug.

In an announcement posted through the franchise’s official Twitter account and the Konami website, Konami is letting players know that LovePlus Every will be ending its service this summer. They’ve even revealed the exact moment the game will shut down: 2 p.m. on August 5, after which players will never get to spend time with their LovePlus Every girlfriend again.

We’re not sure if emotionally this should count as the virtual girlfriends dying or simply dumping the players, moving away, and changing all their phone numbers/email addresses.

▼ Either way, you’ll soon need to find someone else to make video game instant ramen for you.

But hey, just like people sometimes reminisce about a lost connection by looking at photos taken in happier times, LovePlus Every has a photo mode, so fans can at least comfort themselves with a little nostalgia, right? Unfortunately, an error with the game’s servers has erased the saved photo data of a number of players, as shown below, and administrators have said: “We do not envision that the data will be recovered, and we deeply apologize.”

There is a small silver lining, in that Konami has said that players will be able to receive refunds for in-game currency they’ve purchased but don’t use by the time the game shuts down. And while a relationship that doesn’t even last a whole year can often leave one feeling heavily toward the “bitter” end of “bittersweet,” it’s something that happens in the dating world, and considering the lack of enthusiasm some of the LovePlus Every girls had shown for their human suitors, perhaps they should have seen this coming.

Source: Konami via Jin, Hachima Kiko
Top image: YouTube/KONAMI公式
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where looking at all this LovePlus artwork reminds him that he needs to go back and finish Exist Archive one of these days.