You cannot:
...
- Share information about any discovered exploits in the game with anyone other than us
- Operate official, unofficial, private or any otherwise competing BitCraft servers
Doesn't sound open source to me.
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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Yeah adding these two restrictions to any open source licence means that it's not actually open source. They should brush up on the open source definition. It sounds like it will effectively be "source available", which is not the same thing.
I’m super curious to read the license and understand how this is allowed:
- Run your own version of server modules for testing or experimentation
- Make (and sell) a game similar to BitCraft with your own IP (art and themes) using our code as a basis
But what you quoted isn’t.
Isn't this whole project just a showcase for their unique backend? They must be really insecure about it to ban any competition in the license.
If they want to show off their backend just open an only fans like everyone else.
The thing powering the game is also "Open Sourced" under a modified version of the BSL, so I think it's going to be something similar to that.
BSL
A-ha. So not at all open source then, got it.
I had no idea what this was. According to the tagline on the website:
Survival Crafting MMORPG
This game is powered by SpaceTimeDB which is a realtime SQL database, it seems very interesting and was actually the reason I tried out Bitcraft.
SpacetimeDB has enabled us to build our massively multiplayer game, BitCraft, with a small team. Its entire backend, including all game logic, real-time player positions, and all persistent state, is implemented as a SpacetimeDB module.
So this game is also kind of a demo of this "Supabase but for games" VC funded startup.
What exactly is a "realtime SQL database"?
Real-time in computing usually either means a real-time OS with guaranteed low latency response (typically for stuff like microcontrollers regulating machines) or streaming live data (low latency delivery of the most recent value)
This sounds like the latter, and a typical SQL database don't guarantee real-time updates (you can have "atomic writes" to prevent inconsistency but usually this would make it slower) but some databases like this one are designed to ensure you can read out updated correct and consistent values much faster. Also with standard databases you usually make scheduled individual requests, but a real-time database could often send a stream of updated values to a "subscribing" program
Sounds like someone glued redis to MySQL and branded it.
An SQL database that is made to deal with real-time data such as player positions. I'm not sure if this is the official term for it, but I think they call it that and it seems to fit.
read it as BritCraft, it was funny
So is it like an open source Minecraft? Considering what sort of amazing mods people can make without the base game being open source, I can't imagine how awesome it'll be.
It is not Minecraft. It's an MMO
Not quite, you can't shape the world like Minecraft. It's more comparable to Trove. There is Luanti but despite how much I want to like it, it's just not quite there.