Maiden Desmodus Update

This is an update to my previous post and I hope the final word on what’s been going on.

It turns out that my suspicions were correct and the new owner of Maiden Desmodus is in fact the old owner who had supposedly died. I don’t condone it, but after having talked to him I understand why he did it. I’m also glad that he isn’t actually dead.

He agreed to purchase Maiden Desmodus last October and was to make regular monthly payments for the next year until the balance was paid off. I won’t say here what the sale price was and if I did you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

I’ve seen the code and while there were surprisingly few changes since I was last involved there had been some vandalism to the game database. This included most of the website content as well as some game data such as crafting designs, shops, estates and herbs. New accounts weren’t being created properly in the database and there had been a botched attempt at a pwipe causing further problems with account and player files.

I don’t know how any of this happened but as neither the current or former owner were familiar with the code or how the different parts of the game server interacted it’s quite possible they deleted the data by accident. But whatever the cause the game was not in a playable state.

I have some sympathy for the situation the new owner found himself in and because I didn’t want to see the game shut down I agreed to help by  fixing the major issues and getting the game up and running again. I’m also helping to make some changes and implement some new ideas that he has. This is only a short term thing and once everything is stable and working I’ll step back.

You can play now using the custom web client or at maidendesmodus.com 4000. The game will be officially reopening in a couple of weeks and there will be a complete character wipe before that. The game is now completely free with no payments of any kind.

I’ve been asked about open sourcing the code, however I don’t own any of the rights to the code that I wrote for Maiden Desmodus so I can’t release it. When Wade Gustafson and I first got together to write MD we formed a company and all the work that both of us did was for the company. This was to protect us in the case of one person deciding they wanted to pull out of the project.

When Wade sold the game he only sold the world data itself and kept ownership of all the code. The current owner of MD owns the setting and world data but only has a license to use the engine. I don’t know why Wade did this but presumably he either wants to use the code for another game himself or sell/license it to someone else. Good luck with that.