Cyan Worlds announced today that they are going to make Uru an open-source project. They plan to release the source code for the client, servers, and creation tools to the Myst community, and allow it to grow and develop as it will in the hands of the public.
Personally, I think this is a great development. The Myst community is very eager to get back into Uru, and in Cyan’s current state, the prospects of an official revival (especially one on the scale of Myst Online) are looking somewhat grim. By releasing the code for the project, the community itself can build and maintain the world of Uru, without having to rely on Cyan’s fluctuating state to keep Uru surviving. Also, it will provide me with the opportunity to run a real Uru server once again, and maybe even get it to a state of popularity…That would be nice, not to mention the way way way more interesting hacks that can come out of Uru once the hacking community gets its collective hands on the source code…
But on the other hand, this is also sad news. Uru has been a big project for Cyan Worlds for a very long time (production started right after Riven, basically), and now that they’re giving out the code to the public, it’s sort of like they’re letting go of the last piece of their effort, finally acknowledging that perhaps the world is still not ready for Uru Live. It’s a sad thing to think about, made only worse by the realization that there could possibly be no more Cyan-made content for Uru, ever.
That is the thing about big changes; they always have at least two sides to them. Once we go through them, however, we often feel that the new evolution is even richer, both for its wonderful past and origins, and for the new aspects yet to come. Uru has gone through so many changes and has survived, and the community is all the stronger for it.