IncrediBots, a game I started playing since November 2008 (and I’m one of the game’s forums administrators since, uh, a while) is now shutting down, both its games (IncrediBots 1 and IncrediBots 2) and its forums. It’s a sad story.

But, the game is being released as open source! This means that anyone can download it and play it for free, as well as make their own modifications and upload it wherever and even make money off of it without legal repercussions (as long as they’re not charging for the original unmodified game). And right now, people can export their bots (which spits out text code) so they can save the bots on their own computer, and be able to import the code for now AND when the game becomes open source.

The forums administrators have prepared for this moment (though not as early as we have thought) because of how the current owner (Big Fish Games) of the game was like. Bif Fish Games have been wanting to get rid of the game, but couldn’t find any buyers that didn’t get scared of its liabilities (games and forums have a bunch of kids under 13 playing and posting plus some other stuff).

Anyway, the administrators have prepared a backup forums, and we are getting ready for the day the game becomes open source. We already have a kind of system that stores user’s bots (for now, featured bots are being transferred and people can view and copy the bot code). I, along with another administrator, are planning to apply our own modifications and updates.

There’s yet a lot of work to be done before the shut down of IncrediBots (probably around November 20), so yeah. Lots of work!

And no pay! x] That’s how much I love the game and its community. -D