We’ve updated the end of this piece with the latest info as of July 31st.
MMO gamers were bummed back in May when Gamigo sunsetted Dragon’s Prophet over in the Europe, especially since it was the last remaining western version after Daybreak’s 2015 sunset of US version of the game. So it was cause for cheer when the game recently popped back up on Steam, especially since we’d long wondered whether Runewaker was clawing back games like Dragon’s Prophet and Guardians of Ember and ending EU publishing contracts in order to self-publish them.
But a closer inspection of the title on Steam leads us to wonder whether this version of the game is fully legitimate, as a search for the studio BOBYGAME seems to bring up only brand-new social media pages, Roblox and Minecraft profiles, and small gaming YouTubes. The official website for this game also appears to be dragonsprophets.com, and it’s already got a beta and “recharge diamonds” button.
One Redditor who claimed to work for the original publisher cast serious doubts on the provenance of the game.
We’ve asked the Discord developers to clarify their relationship with Runewaker (we haven’t been banned yet), and we’ve reached out to Runewaker for a statement about its involvement or lack thereof too. We’ll update if we get it. But in the meantime, it might be wise to follow Hinji’s advice. While our readers will know that we generally aren’t morally opposed to rogue servers for dead MMOs, we’re concerned that the game is being presented to players as fully legitimate when it may not be.
We’d like to reiterate that our site favors game preservation and emulators especially for dead MMORPGs, but we cannot stress enough that this particular developer is being extremely shady: banning journalists asking basic questions in Discord, lying about his relationship with the IP owner, and issuing fraudulent “proof” of his legitimacy. We’re assuming that Valve will do at least as much research as we did, and you’ll never see this version of the emulator on Steam – or anywhere else.
The Dragon's Prophet scammers are now claiming that they are going to publish the game on the PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. Yea, not going to happen. pic.twitter.com/LfMMX4Y9pp
— Connor (@mmofallout) July 31, 2020
The Steam page is still there, but it does not seem to be coming up in searches in the client now. Maybe Valve is starting to move.
Search works again. No idea what Valve/Steam is doing. Maybe this will be a new business model.
And now the Steam entry is not only still there and searchable, it has Runewalker listed alongside Bobygame again.
What is going on and is Steam really going to let this launch in two days?
I run the Dragon’s Prophet server that has been active for almost 4 years now, and these are likely the same Turkish people who tried to buy files and source code off of us about a month ago. More over they logged onto our server and advertised themselves as ‘a new private server’ before being banned.
In the repository that had the source code leaked years ago, there are pictures/scans of the official trademark paperwork, which is likely what they are showing as ‘evidence’ of them being legitimate.
Your server is selling diamonds (the RMT currency) as well so in my eyes you are just as dodgy as these guys…
We sell currency to offset the cost of the servers/services we have to use to run the game, as well as to pay staff (full time developer, full time 3D modeler/texture artist, part-time concept artist/merch artist, part-time GM). Not going to justify the legality of what we do, or whether or not we’re any better than any private server as there is no real justification.
The difference is that I actively go out of my way to be upfront about what the server is, where we are with the server, and what our plans are with the server. We actively avoided advertising while Gamigo still ran the game, so as to not harm the EU community (most of which has moved to our server).
The only reason I posted the original post here is because I do not want to see Dragon’s Prophet continue to going through the same cycle it has had with previous private servers. There have been 3-4 private servers previously, 3 of which were run by the same guy who would run off with all the ‘donations’ and is the reason why I ended up shouldering running the current server.
This wasn’t meant to advertise our server, which is why I didn’t post a link or our server name (this account name is because of our Twitter, which I was hoping it would let me set a different one).
Because you can’t. It’s Illegal. Obviously.
There is actually, it goes like this:
1. The game is dead and never coming back.
2. We don’t make money out of this.
You still ran a for-profit server while the game was still live though…
Oh come on…not exactly rocket science to get around that…you managed to setup a private server for an MMO and you can’t find the ‘new account’ button?
Now maybe I’m wrong here and you do all this for the love of the game and won’t run off with all the ‘donations’ like that other guy but you have to understand when there’s money involved it’s really, really hard to believe you.
The server has been running for almost 4 years… We’ve also invested 40k+ into it ourselves to pay staff over those years, so it is pretty obvious we’re not going to run off.
I won’t say I run the server out of love, but more out of obligation and responsibility than anything else. I enjoyed the game when I played it, but given the state of the game and all the issues we get to deal with, it isn’t exactly something you’d enjoy after that fact.
As far as running the private server while Gamigo was active… One, Gamigo ran the EU server horribly, and practically every player who has come over has said as such. Every Gamigo did was to milk money out of players, especially with the relaunch/rebrand as Savage Hunt when there was no difference other than the Soul Gaze system.
Secondly, I basically either had to run the server, or people who played one of the prior servers would have been scammed and have nowhere to play. I went from a player on that server, to eventually having to manage finances and then having to take over as owner due to the prior owner disappearing and not maintaining anything. I literally had to shut down a personal side business of mine because I had to choose between managing the private server or continuing to do design services.
Going to stop responding now, as I was not intending to talk about our server, I just do not want to be put on the same level as this Turkish server. If you want to judge our server, you can join our Discord and you can debate things with me there, or just ask players.
All private servers take donations(money) to run the servers. They ask the players to donate if they want too. The monthly cost is not cheap. So to me, you seem to be coming off as trolling the guy. The money the COH Homecoming team pulls in monthly is huge. Yet I see no one complaining about it. Yeah it is illegal but players don’t seem to care and game companies seem to look the other way about it.
Not all of them accept donations but you have to admit selling cash shop currency is a very generous way of saying ‘accepts donations’. Yeah the companies usually look the other way…for now…do you think they’ll carry on doing that when their old games keep popping up, on steam no less in the case of the story in the article, and raking in cash?
What is the website for ur Dragon prophet server
I just got the ban hammer for posting about this on the Steam discussion page for the game. There was no reason given.
Oh yea same.
Was sad to see this game get sunset. It was a decent little diversion when I wanted to get away and play something different. Will be interested to see what happens on august 10th when it is suppose to release again. Granted I wouldn’t buy any real world stuff on something that has already closed down before.