Glitch Free: Art From Closed MMO Enters Public Domain
Use it in your games
Glitch was an ambitious 2D MMO that focused on crafting and socialising instead of combat or grinding. It launched its original beta in early 2009, came out of beta in September 2011, went back into beta that November due to a lack of accessibility or depth, and finally closed down in November 2012.
Or maybe that wasn't final. Maybe that was just the beginning of something else. Tiny Speck, the developers of Glitch, have just released all the game's artwork and some of its code into the public domain. That means you can now use it for whatever you want, including new commercial games.
From the page announcing the release, as reported by VentureBeat:
The entire library of art assets from the game, has been made freely available, dedicated to the public domain. Code from the game client is included to help developers work with the assets. All of it can be downloaded and used by anyone, for any purpose. (But: use it for good.)
Tiny Speck, Inc., the game’s developer, has relinquished its ownership of copyright over these 10,000+ assets in the hopes that they help others in their creative endeavours and build on Glitch’s legacy of simple fun, creativity and an appreciation for the preposterous. Go and make beautiful things.
Which is an extremely rare and wonderful thing for a company to do. They've released it CC0 license, which is basically the opposite of a license. It's the waiving of all rights and copyright claims over a set of work.
Glitch was browser-based casual game set inside the imagination of 11 giants, and it aimed to give players the tools to create much of their own game world, from areas to items to avatars. It's art style was consequently lovely, and better yet flexible. If you're a student, a beginner, or a programmer without art skills, I'd imagine this is a helpful resource.
Tiny Speck was founded by Stewart Butterfield, one of the co-creators of image sharing site Flickr. That site began life as the tool for a never-released social game, and it seems like the same thing might happen again. Tiny Speck's new project is called Slack. It's not a game, but began life as a Glitch development tool to help the large team communicate.
Check out the parts available over on the Glitch site.