Ryzom Faces Uncertain Future

It look like another niche MMORPG may be on the brink of disappearing, as Nevrax, developers of The Saga of Ryzom, is going into receivership next month. There is still hope that someone will purchase the game from Nevrax and secure its future. To that end, the Free Ryzom Campaign has sprung up, entertaining the possibility that the community might be able to raise enough money to take over and run the game under a Free Software license. They point out that this is not unprecedented, as the 3D modeling package Blender was rescued from bankruptcy by its users a few years ago. "In 2002, when the company behind Blender went into liquidation, the community surrounding Blender came to the rescue and raised 100,000 Euros to purchase the software package from its investors. To this day, Blender is a highly successful and actively developed Free Software project, maintained by its community of users." The trouble with trying to operate a MMORPG this way is that there considerable overhead involved in keeping servers for the game up. I guess there's a chance it could be run on donations, or some sort of advertising revenue could be adopted. In any case, Nevrax has stopped charging for Ryzom until its fate is resolved.