This is uncharted territory and we are essentially running an experiment. For this reason we’re not licensing or open sourcing the game’s assets - the art, music, and IP will still be protected for the time being. But all of the code that makes the game run will be made public. We have not chosen the exact license under which we will be open sourcing the game’s code, but it will be one of the OSI’s approved open source licenses.
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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That's fair enough. They still need to be a business after all.
Id open sourced Doom and Quake decades ago, but you still can't just have all the assets for nothing.
Sounds like SpacetimeDB is where they are really heading right now.
That's... Kind of insane! I've been following Bitcraft every now since it got announced but I never expected them to go to this direction. The blog post makes sense but I'm curious what license they're going to use. It could be a legal minefield to try and stop people from stealing the game, re-branding it, then profiting off of it.
It'll be really curious to see how this plays out because there isn't really any major games that went open source, much less one that's going to be actively monetized like Bitcraft.
Our focus will be on a smooth and successful Early Access launch on Steam, which is our highest priority. Only once we are happy with the state of the game will we start the process of open sourcing BitCraft.
Anyway, it sounds like open-sourcing the game might take a while. I hope early access works out for them.
Interesting, at first glance it seems to be a new take on what Wurm online was
What was Wurm Online?
An old take on what BitCraft Online is.
what was BitCraft Online?
A new take on Wurm Online
who's on first?
MUDs
To actually answer your question, Wurm Online is an MMO based on player governance of a medeival-like world, with terraforming and construction as a focus. Basically one big medeival role play Minecraft server. It's a bunch of fun though, if you can find the time to literally build a village from the ground up in your free time.
Also, it's basically the same thing as Veloren, another current open source mmo voxel world builder rpg. But looks like maybe smaller voxels on average.
That's the kind of move I like to see.
I worked on a fork of another Open-Sourced MMO (forked from Ryzom Online). Lot of nice idea (like spell crafting, among other), but the tech stack and system was so old it was more a pain than anything. You couldn't even jump in that games 😂.
Neat! I'll wishlist it but I doubt my PC can handle it worth a damn. Hopefully it comes to PS5 and my bros and I can start us a nice little commune!
A social-focused sandbox MMO could be a nice place to show anarchist concepts to people tbh
In the mean-time, Veloren already exists, and seems to be exactly what this is planning to be. An open source voxel mmo world builder rpg.
Neat, thanks!
"Initial focus on PC"
I hope they're using those words correctly and I can pay it on Linux.
To be fair just about everything seems to
Mhm... what's Bitcraft?
No idea but it certainly isnt AAA.
An in-develpment MMO
ic ic
Never heard of it, nor played it. But I’ll definitely buy a copy to support development and future curious minds!
There are so few open source games, they have just cemented a permanent audience for themselves for the next 10 years by announcing this.
Minecraft legit ruined a generation of gamers.
Also, no Linux version?
especial that they say that they run on open source operating system