Earlier this year, Mojang announced that it would be shutting down the online servers for its digital card game Scrolls roughly 5 years after the game launched into beta. But while that closure essentially rendered the game client itself non-functional, Mojang has now revealed that the game isn’t as dead as it may have seemed.
Instead, the developer has relaunched the game for free, this time with the ability for players to host their own, community-led online servers and a much less controversial name.
For many online games, it’s only a matter of time until costs or external issues force developers to end online support, so it’s worth noting when a developer (even one with the resources of Microsoft-owned Mojang) is able to somehow bring a game back from the brink.
Scrolls, or Caller’s Bane as it is now called, can now be downloaded for free from the game’s website. Dedicated servers still look to be out of the picture, but the site now includes instructions for setting up community-led servers to once again make the game playable.
As Mojang’s Måns Olson explains in the announcement blog, the team had been working behind the scenes to get the online-only game up and running again since its initial closure and, aside from the new branding, is the exact same game as before though Mojang account-driven friends lists are no longer supported and progression from the lengthy beta won’t carry over into Caller’s Bane.