‘City Of Heroes’ Fan Server Will Continue With An Official License From The Developer
from the the-heroes-we-need dept
Nearly four years ago, we discussed the online superhero game City of Heroes, which had been shut down officially by NCSoft, but which had survived in the shadows due to some fan-run servers. That story from 2019 was fairly interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it stood in contrast to some similar instances where fans have run online servers for MMOs that had either also been shutdown, or for original versions of those games that were no longer officially available, only to have to shut down those servers after legal threats or action from developers and publishers. Second, while there had been some concern about such threats from NCSoft among some that ran fan-servers, those were eventually put somewhat to rest by the first group to setup a fan-server stating that they had talked to NCSoft, might have more announcements in the future, but that play could continue without worry of legal threats from the company.
In that post, we mentioned that NCSoft, which has had a history of going legal on things like this in the past, had an opportunity to change the narrative and be awesome by working even more closely with this fan-run community. And, while it took nearly four years to get there, it seems NCSoft will be pursuing that route, having agreed to officially license at least one of the largest of those fan-run server sites.
In a post published today on the Homecoming forums, the folks behind the private server thanked fans for waiting patiently over the last few years after teasing in 2019 that it was in talks with NCSoft about the project.
“Homecoming has been granted a license to operate a City of Heroes server and further develop the game – subject to conditions and limitations under the contract – but, as between us and NCSoft, NCSoft still owns the City of Heroes intellectual property and its derivatives,” the devs behind the project explained.
If you read through the announcement on the forum, there’s a lot of good and only a few areas of concern. The current state of the game, the players and their characters, all remain. Nothing needs to get deleted or changed. In addition, the fan developers can still continue to develop new content for the game. Streaming and social media are also all fine to continue, so long as nobody puts that content behind a paywall.
The only thing that kind of sucks is that it looks like NCSoft is only willing to do this once.
As part of this new deal, it seems other private servers might not stick around. The team hopes players will come to Homecoming and they can centralize the community more. The Homecoming team confirmed that part of the deal requires a single “in-house installation and patching solution” and this was why the team spent time developing its own launcher.
Still, compared with the general blanket refusal to allow any fan-game scenarios to exist exhibited by most other developers and publishers, this is a very large step in the right direction.
So cheers, NCSoft. It’s nice to see a gaming company actually work with fans instead of against them.
Filed Under: city of heroes, fan servers, video games
Companies: ncsoft
Comments on “‘City Of Heroes’ Fan Server Will Continue With An Official License From The Developer”
That sound you hear is Tero Pulkinnen grinding his teeth, angry that not only is a developer okaying fan-built content on top of work that they did, but even providing support to make sure that it stays alive long after the devs did their work, and more than anyone will ever give to Meshpage.
Re:
Just grinding his teeth?
Considering how much he’s been bragging that outdated software and content needs to be nuked into oblivion so other tech (read: Meshpage, literally nothing else) can come in to dominate the market, under the pretext that devs can’t be expected to provide support for older versions or models, I think this bit of news is going to blow his mind like a faulty light bulb.
what an idea
want to Upset the Customers that LOVE your game.
Close them down.
So all those customers GO OUT and each creates another site. And the Company Must hire lawyers to send requests to shut down.
And as each is shut down, MORE pop up..YEA.
How much do lawyers charge Per site?
And would it be interesting if each of the sites DIDNT have owners? All Faked.