NCSOFT grants a license for a City of Heroes fan server to host the game, which will ‘be funded entirely through donations’
This will allow development to continue
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NCSOFT has granted the popularHomecomingfan server a license to hostCity of Heroes, finally bringing the game back in an official capacity.
Launched in 2004, theCity of Heroesis a superhero MMO that allows players to don some brightly colored spandex and dive into the comic-book inspired Paragon City as the fully customizable hero of their dreams.
Centered around fighting supervillains and capturing criminals across the open-world, it had a fairly successful run with its fair share of major content updates before it was shut down by publisher NCSOFT on November 30, 2012.
Thanks to the tireless work of a sizable community of extremely dedicated fans, however, the game continued to live on with various underground fan projects attempting to keep things afloat despite the lack of official support.
One of the most significant of these wasCity of Heroes: Homecoming, which saw fans host the game as a free-to-play title and even continue development themselves by creating all-new content updates.
Although there had always been the looming threat of NCSOFT stepping in to shut these efforts down, it appears thatHomecominghas been given the official seal of approval according toa recent post on the fan community’s forum.
The post states that “NCSOFT has officially grantedHomecominga license to hostCity of Heroes” and assures players that their “accounts and characters are safe.”
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It also points towards a pretty bright future for the game, claiming that “development of new content will continue” which will be made available for free and “funded entirely through donations.”
There is a little more detail later in the thread, where the forum’s moderator explained that, while the license will allowHomecomingto “operate aCity of Heroesserver and further develop the game,” NCSOFT will retain ownership of the intellectual property.
This is incredible news for anyone who has been sticking with the game since support ended and it could even manage to attract some new players with the prospect of new content on the horizon.
For some top online games that you can play right now, see our guides to thebest free gamesor thebest co-op games.
Dash is a technology journalist who covers gaming hardware at TechRadar. Before joining the TechRadar team, he was writing gaming articles for some of the UK’s biggest magazines including PLAY, Edge, PC Gamer, and SFX. Now, when he’s not getting his greasy little mitts on the newest hardware or gaming gadget, he can be found listening to J-pop or feverishly devouring the latest Nintendo Switch otome.
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