Has City of Heroes Benefited from a “Guardian” Developer?

2024 has been good to City of Heroes and private server fans alike. Earlier this month, the Homecoming rogue server announced that they’d come to an operating agreement with the game’s publisher, NCSoft, and are now licensed to operate the game without ownership.

This is a major victory for game preservationists and City of Heroes fans, who have been unable to legally play the game since NCSoft shut down the official servers in 2012 citing meager profits. But it’s also highly unusual. And highly strange.

Firstly, the City of Heroes private server development story is strange on its own. Within years of the game’s shutdown, rumors of a working rogue server began circulating among fans. These rumors were soon validated as the server’s existence was confirmed, and soon after, the game’s source code was released by fan developers. From that point on, anyone with the means could run their own City of Heroes server.

I’m not a developer. But generally speaking, I think it’s fair to say that private server development isn’t easy. Much of MMO content is stored server-side, not client side. So getting a massive online game back up isn’t usually as simple as reverse-engineering the game’s installation directory on your PC. It can take significant resources and time for part-time fan development to make any strides as a result.

But with City of Heroes, the private server development didn’t take long — and now I know why. Someone released the game’s source code around the time NCSoft shut down the official servers. And that source code has been circulating ever since. See the video below:

This lends credence to my theory that City of Heroes has benefited from an “inside man” developer, who, knowing of the game’s imminent demise, took strides to preserve it for later resurrection. From a corporate and legal perspective, this is generally highly frowned upon and illegal. But City of Heroes had a highly passionate development team and fanbase, so I wouldn’t be surprised if one or few stubborn, original devs couldn’t let the game go.

The licensing itself is strange too and also supports this theory. How often does a fan development team have such leverage and sway with a game’s publisher? Almost never, with MMO private servers only ever drawing the ire of their creators. And how does NCSoft benefit from other non-profit developers operating their multi-million dollar games? If NCSoft wasn’t happy with City of Heroes’ profits before, I can’t imagine they’re any happier now. But once again, if Homecoming has connections with original devs or NCSoft staff — and it sounds like they do given the speedy private server development — the story checks out.

So there you have it. I believe City of Heroes has benefited from one or more “guardian” developers: Original staff who have spent countless hours protecting their labor of love. And in the context of a super-hero video game, nothing could be more heroic.