Nico Nico Douga operator Dwango has decided to pull the plug on Ai Sp@ce, which is (as Wikipedia puts it) a “virtual 3D massively multiplayer online social game (MMOSG)”, on June 30, 2011.
Dwango and a bunch of other Japanese companies started the virtual world in 2008 but never managed to really acquire users. In order to access Ai Sp@ce and buy virtual items, users needed to have a Nico Nico account and purchase Nico Nico points.
Ai Sp@ce was also tied into Nico Nico in other ways (users can, for example, upload gameplay clips directly on Nico Nico), but all of that seems to have never actually worked well.
