(This article has been updated since publication; updates are at the bottom!)
Well, you wanted the City of Heroes private server code, and you got it.
“It was uploaded onto a Discord server someone started who we don’t know,” a Discord source familiar with the situation just told me. “Like 300 people congregated there and now the files have spread like wildfire. It’s not the character files. It also doesn’t contain the mission files or NPCs, but it’s a big piece of the puzzle for reverse engineering the game that no one but Leo had before.”
It’s all part of a story we’ve been covering all week, as information about a secret City of Heroes private server was leaked across the web and the community agitated for its purveyors to disperse the code to everyone, not just the chosen few. Last night, it became clear that was a real and possible solution to the drama unfolding.
Ahead of the drop of the files, we spoke to the anonymous Discord participants who were apparently given the code to clean up and roll out to the public. Here’s what they told us.
MassivelyOP: Are multiple people receiving all of the files, such that multiple people can independently host the game? Or is this one of those things where everyone’s getting a different thing and only with their powers combined can a server actually be run? Is it going to be possible for anyone to access all or part of these files? Or is it going to be passed only to specific person or people vetted to run a community server?
Everyone will have access. That seems to be the most satisfying approach. We’re not going to make a server either. It’s up to the community to do with it as they see fit. That seems to go along with what Leo would want.
As for the characters, the person holding the code does not have them. Leo still does. It’s just the server code as far as we know. I don’t want to speak for Leo, but I believe personally that he intends to give it back to us in a way that ensures we get our characters and not characters belonging to other people. He’s not really involved at all at this point. I assume that anything regarding the character info will be dealt with at a later date! We don’t have the character database, in any case.
What is being done specifically to ensure that the code remains with the community in some way forever? Like, what if everyone with a copy gets hit by a bus?
Not a whole lot immediately. [The person who received the code last night] was only a random dude.
What is happening to the actual existing SCORE server and the people on it and their characters? Is that over?
[Ed: They didn’t answer this one – I assume since they don’t want to speak for the SCORE folks because they aren’t the SCORE folks.]How are people protecting themselves from legal action beyond the Great Scrubbening?
As far as the scrubbening, he scrubbed it. We don’t know! It’s really terrifying to be honest. Either way, it should be clear: We are operating independently from Leo. Nothing we say should be construed as an official message from Leo in any way. Dude’s dealt with enough hardship as it is.
We’d like to thank our sources for their candor. To be clear, we are not encouraging illegal activity and advise everyone involved to consider their actions carefully.
On characters: “I am getting lots of pushback about releasing [the character database] both in and out of SCORE because players don’t want ‘their’ characters to be available to anybody. So I’m putting that release on hold until the dust settles and the community at large can come to a decision.”
On servers: “Piggs won’t be there because server actually runs slower if you have piggs; but all the data files that WOULD go into piggs will be there. […] Whatever servers I set up will use the latest binaries and data that SCORE itself was using, internally referred to as Issue 25: Unbroken Spirit. This is simply because it will be the fastest to deploy, since it already has tools for account creation, all the microtransaction garbage like the Paragon Rewards tree removed, and many other optimizations. I am sure there will be a lot of complaints about it not being a “pure” release that will want a lot of changes stripped. Have some patience. It will take much longer to get a server set up if I have to roll back my repositories to early 2013 and hunt down a version of the data files that would play nice with it and does not have massive gaps in content. I don’t even think such a version exists. This was a massive reverse engineering that took months to get something usable.” [Thanks, Sean!]
Information about the continuing work on the various projects can be found on the Titan Network forums and Reddit.
According to public Discord chats, work on an initial server is continuing. We cannot link directly to the site, but we’re pretty sure you can find what you’re after on Reddit. :)
No, it’s not my screenshot and I’m not running the server; they’re just messing with us. Thanks to the lovely lady who sent it to me. :)
Once again, we cannot advise doing anything illegal – and yes, this stage of the project is going to continue getting harder and harder for us to cover, but it’s not because we don’t want to, please understand. Information about the server can be found on Discord and Reddit.
Completely confused? You’re not alone. Here’s all of our coverage to date:
NCsoft follows up City of Heroes code copyright filing with fresh trademark application
City of Heroes: Homecoming kicks off the winter season in its latest patch
City of Heroes: Homecoming patches in the third part of Issue 26 with new stories and powers
City of Heroes’ Homecoming announces Issue 26 Page 3, Halloween content, and collab with other rogue servers
City of Heroes’ Homecoming rogue servers are now blocking copyright-infringing characters
City of Heroes Homecoming is now banning accounts for… real-money trading
TonyV leaves City of Heroes NCsoft negotiations, resigns from Titan Network
City of Heroes: Homecoming plays with Rage crashes, PvP stuns, and Tanker powers on the test server
City of Heroes Homecoming asks players what they want from a licensed server
City of Heroes Homecoming players have rolled almost a million toons to date
City of Heroes Homecoming adjusts snipes and Dominator powers with the latest patch
Today’s City of Heroes’ Homecoming patch future-proofs the rogue servers for Mac players
City of Heroes’ Homecoming Team finally posted a new beta patch after months of public quiet
City of Heroes’ Homecoming rogue servers have joined the Titan Network/NCsoft negotiations
Catching up with City of Heroes’ Homecoming rogue servers as NCsoft negotiations continue
One of City of Heroes’ rogue servers, Reborn/Pleiades, was just shut down by its operator
City of Heroes: Homecoming hit 100K players as another donation round funds
Perfect Ten: 10 things I’d love to see added to City of Heroes in the rogue server era
City of Heroes: Homecoming adds numerical power cooldowns, nerfs Death from Below, adds User Agreement
City of Heroes: Community harassment ramps up as Homecoming counts 91,000 players
Perfect Ten: Helpful tips for returning to City of Heroes in 2019
City of Heroes: All the public servers we know of, plus Reddit’s launch and Homecoming’s name release
City of Heroes: Homecoming concurrency, Rebirth and Reddit’s i24 servers, and the future of basebuilding
City of Heroes: Homecoming’s new home, EU players, multiboxing, SEGS, and… piglets
City of Heroes rogue server teams activate i24 PTS, prep for tomorrow’s Homecoming server moves
City of Heroes community forms Round Table as Homecoming rogue servers count over 56,000 players
City of Heroes’ Homecoming servers port to Canada this weekend, server status page is live
Leaderboard: Would you donate for a City of Heroes rogue server?
City of Heroes: New servers, Discord drama, and Homecoming gets $6900 in donations in 20 minutes
City of Heroes’ Homecoming rogue servers will offer character transfers after all
City of Heroes now has a fifth rogue server live as Homecoming buffs up and work on i24 continues
City of Heroes’ rogue servers nerf AE farms, boost XP, but can’t do character transfers
Two weeks in, City of Heroes has four rogue servers and heartwarmingly massive queues
Nearly 30K people have rolled City of Heroes rogue server accounts as the game turns 15 years old
Aaaaand now there’s a new temporary City of Heroes rogue server up
The Titan Network is negotiating to open a legal community-run City of Heroes server
City of Heroes’ first new rogue server shut down over a fake legal threat, but admins say it’s coming back
Leaderboard: Do you plan to play on a City of Heroes rogue server?
City of Heroes’ rogue servers may abandon character restoration as 14000 gamers register to play
Lawful Neutral: Is it safe to play on City of Heroes’ inevitable rogue servers?
The City of Heroes private server team has released its code [Update: The test server is live]
What’s going on with City of Heroes now: ‘This game is a unicorn’
Massively OP Podcast Episode 217: City of Heroes after dark
Into the Super-Verse: The death of the City of Heroes community
Leaderboard: Where do you stand on the ‘secret’ City of Heroes emulator?
‘Secret’ City of Heroes emulator operators address SCORE leak drama, rebut personal info database rumor
I have to admit, I came out of the podcast convinced that the right thing for the community to do would be to delete the code.
Everyone wants city of heroes – more than one team has dedicated themselves to recreating the experience, both legally and illegally.
But somewhere, a developer is out there who risked his or her future to give others the opportunity to play this – likely without thought to the consequences. Maybe the right thing to do, then, is to sacrifice the game we really, really want so we can protect the authors of the things we enjoyed.
The community would survive, perhaps even unite and thrive. We’d already started making the legacy of CoH our own and writing its next chapters ourselves. It wouldn’t be easy, knowing that the characters we thought were dead are out there and choosing to hit delete for good. But the right thing is rarely easy, and we should protect our devs even when it’s hard – perhaps BECAUSE it is hard, which is what makes choices truly heroic. There wouldn’t be any game – and more importantly, any community, without them.
I’m watching positive gamer stream it and it looks like ge is going to cry. I may be tearing up a bit too
The server is having some issues but I did get my old main made and waqs working on the ‘Isolator’ badge in the outbreak tutorial before the servers got taken down. It’s going to have some teething issues of course, but it was nice how easily I fell back into it, a testament to how well designed the controls are.
I don’t mean to be that guy .
so posting an article about an illegal server will be common now ? hope this doesn’t become a common thing.
that reddit link above is a how to set up your own server.
They’ll post one everyday and twice on Sundays!
It has been our general policy for many years not to cover emulators for live games unless they’re doing something of public importance – for example, WoW emulators pressuring Blizzard into doing WoW Classic was all worth covering here. We wouldn’t cover UO emulators because the real game still exists.
We do sometimes cover emulators for dead games, particularly when the studios have given either formal or tacit approval – for example, Glitch (for the former) and SWG (for the latter). It remains unclear what NCsoft’s ultimate position on these servers will be, but that will dictate how we cover it going forward. At the moment, we are working from the assumption that NCsoft will be trying to shut down the server, so our staff cannot be publicly involved in supporting the server until/unless NCsoft suggests otherwise. But we will continue to report on what the community is doing.
And to be clear, the Reddit link above does not tell you how to set up your own server.
. to me a how to get on a private server is just the same. IMo you shouldn’t have any kind of links on running a server or accessing one. its not much just to take that link out. if people want to find the info they will. you guys don’t need to help.
Nonsense. MOP is unlikely responsible for those individuals actions once they visit that link, anymore than those using that link to join The Red Pill, Stormfront or ISIS. Thus, there’s likely too much plausible denial for this to be of any concern. As I am pretty sure MOP has carefully considered all their options when posting that. So it’s unlikely anything will stick on their side once the legal crap hits the fan over this. So chill?
I do understand the concern, though. I definitely will not be linking directly to the sites that are currently operating in grey areas – you’re not wrong there guys, I can’t do that. But Reddit’s just Reddit, and frankly the instructions in that link are the same instructions for setting up Paragon Chat, which is totes legal.
well i tried to explain it. games go on.
This night I have walked the streets of a vanished city. I have heard voices long stilled raised in song. And I have whaled the bejesus out some street thugs as of old. Truly a good night. Except for street thugs.
Thus, Bree was officially canonized in Paragon City lore.
I won’t rest until I have a glitter-encrusted statue on top of the giant donut in Faultline.
(I AM NOT SERIOUS.)
That sounds like something a serious person would say.
It’s even made more serious as the said donut is pink! <3
Bree, I want to point out that I saw Leandro say in the discord it was the recent podcast specifically that helped him realize just how bad he’d fucked up, and he named the current server after you. I think in the end your work had a huge positive impact here.
That was super kind of him to say – but seriously, just doing our job! :D
Updating here: A kind player on Discord let us know that there is a screengrab of an “article” that superficially appears to be from Massively OP, supposedly reporting that NCsoft is investigating the private server. While we have no doubt NCsoft is aware of the community’s efforts right now, the article itself is an absolute fake. We did not publish that article, and I’m guessing our regulars can easily spot the formatting and prose errors that mark it out as such. Carry on. :D
To be able to run through the sewers of Paragon, or traverse the apocalyptic landscape of Boomtown, once more would be a treat unto itself.
Hyped!
Interesting, considering the community, the number of projects already planned around the game and the way this particular incident is going down, as well as the company owning the rights to the code … what could possibly go wrong?
I’ll tell you what’s going to get wrong:
A number of people, especially Leo, are going to need to consult legal representation soon.
They can’t do that. No company can do that. It would be a blanket invitation for anyone to steal their property and put it on the internet.
“Everything should be free and belong to the fans” might feel good but it’s a pipe dream.
The only “nice” option they had was to not sue Leo if he agree to shut down the server and not distribute their property. By doing this latest move, NCSoft now has zero choice in their response.
Super not true – we even have a working example for what NCsoft could do to license this and bring it under control: Daybreak and P99.
If you think that NCSoft is going to respond an employee stealing a massive amount from them, giving it to a stranger on the internet, and then having that stranger give their intellectual property to the world by going into business with them, I…
I… I can’t even begin to describe how unlikely that is. That will never happen.
NCSoft has *ZERO* choice not to sue now. Otherwise they’ve announced open season on all of their trademarks and intellectual property and that their employees can clean them out with no repercussions.
It might. And it might not. Again, Daybreak and Disney aren’t pursuing any of the SWG emulators, including the NGE version allegedly yoinked by an employee and distributed, and that’s Star Wars, not some otherwise-useless obscure IP. Daybreak/SOE responded to the P99 EverQuest server by doing exactly what you said nobody would do – by licensing it formally to the people running it. Blizzard pursues WoW emulators, so they host in places where they can’t be sued, which is why a hundred thousand WoW fans are currently playing on those servers – but the popularity of those servers also provoked Blizzard to work on its own classic server. There are multiple ways this can go. Just waiting to see what NC does.
You’re confusing copyright law and trademark law. Trademark has to be defended or potentially be lost. Copyright does not.