Darkflame Universe, the player-run emulator of the long-shuttered MMO LEGO Universe, has been rather quiet for a while now. Readers will recall that the emulation project has been in closed alpha since 2017, though it was planning to move into its beta phase and even put out a large update to the game that looked to pave the way to beta. The devs behind the server had also announced in October of last year that they were in talks with LEGO Group to discuss ways for the project to exist.
The game’s official site has since been updated with something of a bittersweet announcement: Darkflame Universe does appear to be going dark, but it will be distributing the game’s source code later this year to allow others to host their own server and play the game as they wish, either alone or with friends. “While we are deeply saddened that we cannot give this revival the proper ‘massively multiplayer’ component with a hosted server, we are still thrilled that the world will get the game back,” reads the post.
As for those discussions with LEGO Group, the Darkflame devs state that despite lengthy discussions and numerous proposals like disabling chat and UGC features, both parties were not able to come to an agreement on how to make the server legally viable.
Details on how this all works will be announced once the server’s source is ready to be released.
