What is BitCraft Online?
BitCraft Online is a community-driven sandbox MMORPG set in a procedurally generated world shared by all players. The whole world is completely editable. Not only can you cut down trees, build roads or construct buildings and cities, but because it’s an MMO, you can build societies, economies, and relationships. Players start with nothing and work together (or compete) to shape the world around them. You get a rich world to explore, a huge community of players to befriend and compete with, and the freedom to figure out what kind of society you want to build.
We’ve been working on BitCraft for over 7 years, and with early access on the horizon, we’re making a decision that we hope will set the tone for the future of the game: we’re open sourcing the code.
Why We Are Open Sourcing
There are 3 foundational reasons for this decision:
- We want the genre to be more accessible
- We think BitCraft will benefit from open source collaboration and exploration
- We want to give something back
- Making MMOs more accessible We believe deeply in the genre of massively-multiplayer games and the unforgettable social experiences that these games can create, but the barrier to entry is simply too high to allow indie developers to experiment in the space. Building a single, scalable, editable world like BitCraft’s presents perhaps one of the most difficult technical challenges in server-side backends. We believe that the BitCraft source code will provide both an example of how to build an MMO and an example of how to use SpacetimeDB to do so. That’s both a win for the developer community and for our platform.
- BitCraft Will Benefit We believe that BitCraft itself will benefit substantially from open source collaboration. This could take the form of something small like earlier flagging of performance or security bugs by the community. It could also take the form of community members contributing features to the code base directly. We’re already seeing amazing things from players who build tools, spreadsheets, and fan sites to support the game. The benefits could even take the form of the community forking the server entirely and building an even more fun game which we take inspiration from. We believe that games are made better by modding and rapid playtesting and experimentation. BitCraft is more than just a game, it’s a world. And we’ve always imagined that world growing in ways we can’t fully predict or control. Opening up the code gives the community a direct way to shape that future. We’ll never be able to do as much experimentation as the entire community.
- Giving Back Lastly, we want to give back to the Open Source Community. BitCraft wouldn’t exist without open source software. From the operating systems we run on, to the source control we use, to the infrastructure that runs our servers, to the libraries that power the tools we build, open source code has been a core part of our development journey from day one. We’ve benefited tremendously from this ecosystem, and we believe it’s only right to give something back. But more than that: we genuinely believe that open ecosystems produce better software. They encourage transparency, creativity, and collaboration. Problems get solved faster. Communities form. Innovation happens in the open.
Why Almost No One Else Does This
Despite the benefits mentioned above, to our knowledge BitCraft will be the first venture backed/commercially developed MMORPG open sourced under an open source license. It’s incredibly rare for an online game, an MMORPG in particular, to be open sourced. There are a few reasons for that.
First, games are complicated. The codebases are large, idiosyncratic, and often tightly coupled with proprietary tools and content. Making a game’s code public is not just a technical decision. It’s a legal, cultural, and organizational one.
Second, many studios view their code as a kind of secret sauce. Something to be protected. In a world where most game companies live or die by a few percentage points of retention or monetization, it’s easy to see why so many prefer to keep things close to the chest.
And third, frankly open sourcing your game means giving up control. People will see your bad variable names. They’ll criticize your architecture decisions. They’ll fork the code and make things you never expected. And by definition you don’t have control over what they create.
The fear is that you will help to create your own most fearsome competitor. If you don’t manage the community right, your business might be undercut by your own hard work. That’s scary, and understandably so, but we think the potential to make something that truly lasts is worth it.
As a for-profit business, it is imperative that we go into this clear eyed and in a principled, well thought out way. We believe that we can open source the game in a way that does not undermine our business. Our first and most important priority is to build an incredible company that builds amazing products. The only way we can do that is to make money so we can pay our incredible team and the investors who believed in us and our vision from the very beginning.
What This Means for the Community
If you're not a software developer, the phrase "open source" might sound like jargon. But it's a simple idea with a powerful impact. Open source software is software that anyone can inspect, modify, and distribute. That means the code behind a project is publicly available and not locked away behind a corporate firewall or encrypted into a black box.
In practice, this allows developers, hobbyists, and curious players to see how the sausage is made. More importantly, it means anyone can build on top of the work that’s already been done to create tools, mods, or entirely new projects. This is the foundation of many of the tools we use every day, including much of the modern web and game development stack.
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 means you’ll be able to browse the codebase, modify the code, share the code, host your own servers, experiment with mechanics, or just satisfy your curiosity about how an MMORPG ticks under the hood. For indie developers, we hope it can be a useful starting point. For modders, a powerful toolkit. For curious players, a new way to engage.
We know this won’t be for everyone. Most players just want to play. But for those who want to go deeper, to tinker and build and contribute, we’re excited to see what you do with it.
When will Open Sourcing be Available?
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. As always, we will be sure to keep our community updated as soon as we are able to.
We can’t wait to see everyone in game for Early Access. And for those of you who are code-curious we’re looking forward to seeing you poking around in the codebase once we’ve cleaned it up and made it public.
Wishlist BitCraft on Steam here!
— Alessandro, 3Blave and the BitCraft team