AVA RE:BIRTH Readies Fall 2026 Launch With CBT Fixes; Original Alliance of Valiant Arms Closes October 28

G·O・P will shut down Alliance of Valiant Arms on October 28, 2026, closing out an 18-year run that defined competitive PC FPS in Japan. The studio confirmed both the original game’s end and a slate of improvements for AVA RE:BIRTH, the direct successor, in announcements made today.

The original AVA launched in Japan on December 1, 2008 under GameOn (the predecessor of G・O・P), and helped anchor the Japanese PC FPS competitive scene through regular online and offline tournaments. Japanese clans reached multiple international finals over the years. G・O・P is now winding the original down to clear the runway for RE:BIRTH, which launches this fall on PC via Pmang in Korea and VFUN in Japan. Pre-registration is open.

The new details announced today come from a closed beta that ran October 2 to 7, 2026. Improvements headed to the official service:

• Hunting Field mode (the new PvPvE extraction mode) will have enemy attack power, reaction speed, spawn placement and behavior tuned, after CBT players flagged it as too punishing with starter gear.
• Weapon feel and hit feedback are being overhauled in response to CBT complaints about weak hit registration.
• A new Black Market trading system (with item search, category filtering, and price-watch favorites) will be added.
• Custom rooms and a server selector will unlock at launch.
• New modes Capture (占領), Escort (護衛), and Deathmatch (デスマッチ) will be available at launch, in addition to Bomb (爆破) and Team Deathmatch (殲滅).
• Post-launch: Equipment Cost Limit System to keep gear strength from snowballing (cap on combined weapon + armor cost per loadout), plus a planned Clans feature.

Can you play it in English?

Not announced. The original AVA never shipped in English, and AVA RE:BIRTH is launching only on the Korean Pmang platform and the Japanese VFUN platform, both free-to-play. There is no Steam page, no PlayStation or Xbox version, and no Steam-published English version of RE:BIRTH. Korean and Japanese are the supported languages based on the regional launches.

Our read: RE:BIRTH is essentially a “from-scratch rebuild on the same bones” play: the same Korean-Japanese FPS pipeline (Neowiz developer REDDUCK built the original engine; GameOn ran it in Japan since 2008), the same Blast/Neo-nostalgic visual cues, the same EU vs NRF fiction, and most of the original maps returning for Bomb mode (per 4Gamer’s CBT writeup). What is new is the PvPvE “Hunting Field” extraction mode and the cost-cap anti-gear-creep system, which the developers have explicitly framed as a response to a Japanese FPS scene that has been waiting for a successor to fill the post-Counter-Strike competitive void. The 18-year shutdown is the formal closing of one chapter; the release calendar entry for RE:BIRTH is still marked TBA, and the official G·O·P October 14 update did not name a date inside “fall.”

Readers tracking the Coming West entries should note this sits in the japan-only bucket, joining long-running Japan/Korea-only FPS revivals. Compared to recent Western FPS launches (the Battlefield 6 model), RE:BIRTH’s regional-only model is the opposite distribution strategy: same genre, opposite geography. Players in the West who want a successor story should also check out Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse’s review roundup (different genre, but a similarly old brand rebooting right now).

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report