 |
|
 |
|
Blocksworld[]
In its prime, Blocksworld was a very popular game with a vibrant community. Despite its success, community conflicts, quiet development, and multiple bad choices led to the game's demise.
Overview[]
Blocksworld was a 3D sandbox game available on iOS devices, and later, a version on Steam. Using the wide array of blocks, players were able to make models and games with the help of a built-in visual coding system.
Blocks could be purchased with coins, a currency that could be purchased with real-world money, or earned by having people play your games or buy your models. Players could also buy “Sets” that would contain special blocks you couldn’t get anywhere else.
The game was originally developed by a Swedish developer Boldai (originally Creative Builder). However in 2013, less than a year after its creation, Blocksworld was purchased by Linden Labs, a game development studio that has primarily focused on their interactive virtual world, Second Life.
Decline of Blocksworld[]
From 2013 until around 2017, Linden Labs continued to see Blocksworld grow not only as a game were you could build anything, but also as a social platform. Community Challenges would be released on a weekly/monthly basis, which featured a contest to see who could build the best world based off of a theme, determined beforehand by the Linden Labs Employees. The last of these contests was held in 2017.
Blocksworld “Wars”[]
One of the things that started the decline of Blocksworld were the “Wars” that made-up governmental groups would declare on one another. During such wars, the groups would publish worlds depicting the other group getting beaten up with violence. Linden Labs did not enforce rules that prohibited these worlds. Many people stopped playing due to the unnecessary drama, and some thought these wars ruined the PG nature of the game.
Mature content[]
Many players had made themselves infamous by uploading adult content to Blocksworld. Linden Labs didn't do anything about it for a long time, but eventually they banned players such as Joey Slikk.
Lack of Updates[]
After around 2017, Linden Labs stopped updating Sets and Challenges, which left the community in a state of limbo. The only updates were patches to keep the server running and small moderation.
Loss of Rights to MLP & Transformers[]
Before 2017, My Little Pony (MLP) and Transformers sets were available to players. These sets included blocks to make ponies and Transformers.
In 2017, Linden lost the rights to use My Little Pony and Transformers content due to failing to renew their copyright license with Hasbro, the owner of MLP and Transformers. This forced Linden to silently remove the sets from the store. The loss of these sets led to multiple popular players leaving, as everything they did relied on them.
Financial issues[]
Another significant factor to the server shutdown was lack of funds from the app itself. As more players left due to a lack of updates, revenue from players purchasing coins and advertising eventually decreased enough that one could speculate Linden pulled the plug on the servers because of it. It is also known that Linden has legal quarrels over the owner(s) of the once-popular worlds.com website for copyright-infringement over Second Life, Linden’s biggest source of income. https://youtube.com/watch?v=p9LWzr-_ibI
Legal battles combined with the declining popularity of Blocksworld is likely what made Linden Labs shut down the game's servers and move on to other projects.
The End of Blocksworld[]
In an attempt to save Blocksworld, Linden Labs started releasing updates that received negative reception from the community. These included:
Pay-to-Play Worlds[]
Linden made changes to the game in December 2015, which included worlds achieving the “Elite” (2000 plays or more) status or higher to be permanently pay-to-play. This meant that players would have to pay 1 coin to play these kinds of worlds. This sparked outrage in the community and many players left. This was the first hard hit that Blocksworld took.
1 World Per Day Limit/ 3 Models Per Day Limit[]
To help combat poorly-made worlds, Linden released changes that meant players could only make 1 world and 3 models a day, or pay 50 Coins to make 1 more piece of content. This sparked outrage and chaos as many players used Blocksworld to communicate with their friends; now, they could only do so every 24 hours. Thus, people started resorting to making models, which had an unlimited limit- until Linden caught on, making a 3 model limit in response. After this, Blocksworld's playerbase and content ecosystem collapsed, and Linden almost completely stopped developing it.
Firing of Leslie[]
Leslie was one of the main Linden employees, noted for being the nicest in many players' opinions. Linden had kept him around only to help defend Blocksworld from getting hacked or flocked with adult users. However as Blocksworld kept getting more and more unpopular, Linden had to lay off Leslie. This ended up being a mistake, as he was the only person keeping Blocksworld afloat.
Hackers[]
After Leslie left the Linden team, multiple players found ways to exploit into Blocksworld and upload their own pictures. This meant there was a possibility that adult content could be added to Blocksworld. Luckily, there wasn’t. After 2 months or so, Linden finally caught on and banned the exploiters.
Error 505/503[]
One day in 2020, a glitch appeared. Players trying to log into the Steam version found themselves stuck at the loading screen with "Error 503: Could not log in." This undoubtedly killed the PC version. On handheld devices, publishing worlds stopped working for most people. Models would not go into your inventory, and coins stopped working altogether. When a world was sent to be published, players would get the "Error 505" message.
Shutdown of Blocksworld[]
Blocksworld was not worth much to Linden at this point. It was extremely unpopular, and while they probably looked at ways of fixing it, it wouldn’t be worth it considering Blocksworld’s already poor reputation.
Server Shutdown[]
On June 17, 2020, Linden had silently shut down the Blocksworld servers. The app was soon removed from Steam and the App Store. Players got a message telling them that the Blocksworld Server is under service. However, Blocksworld had been shut down for good. What was once a vibrant, creative game, had declined to the point of shutting down.
Linden Labs has now moved all development to other projects including Second Life, a multi-user, multimedia virtual world.
Blocksworld is gone, however, a modified unofficial second server exists. BWSecondary or Blocksworld Wool is an unofficial revival project started in 2019 running on fresh servers.
Revival of Blocksworld[]
Blocksworld's fan base had greatly declined, but some on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram clung to hope.
Acquisition Rumors[]
In late November of 2023, rumors speculated that FORTELL GAMES, a company based in Santa Monica, CA, and Kiev, Ukraine, had acquired the development rights to Blocksworld. This sparked conversation in the fanbase, who wondered if Blocksworld could make a return.
Blocksworld Website[]
Before the acquisition, blocksworld.com redirected to Linden Labs' website. However in Early December, the website's front page showed a beating heart and then it was changed to falling icons of merch, social links, and Blockster faces.
Social Media Activity[]
On the official Blocksworld Twitter (now X), the long inactive account posted a GIF of a heartrate monitor, causing passion and anticipation in the remaining fanbase. Many Reddit posts were made about this, and the r/Blocksworld subreddit was revived. The account involved itself in comment threads and posted short videos frequently from then on.
The following day after the Twitter revival, the Blocksworld Instagram posted an image of a heart and the hype only grew from there. The caption asked players to fill out a research form. Soon after, an image was posted of an array of Blocksters with different skins and costumes, captioned "We are stronger together!"
The YouTube account also posted. There were videos and shorts tagged "Made in Blocksworld" and posts picked up on the account. The first video, "car models fly models" showcased an array of vehicles built in-game and there were 4 shorts posted showing off machines and worlds.
Official Announcement[]
FORTELL announced that the game would come back likely in Q3 of 2024. The date is currently unknown.