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Freemium RTS Battleforge, shuttered by publishers EA back in 2013, is coming back as an officially sanctioned fan-revival entitled Skylords Reborn.
The news was announced in a post on the BattleForge Reborn forum, where community manager MrXLink mentioned that EA has given its blessing to a fan made resurrection of Battleforge, under its new name Skylords Reborn. Skylords Reborn is looking to ape the state of Battleforge when it closed on October 31st 2013, although with no microtransactions, claiming that the game will never be "Pay2Win or Pay2Play".
The game will run on a new custom server, operated by Ardent Pea. The first hint of Skylords Reborn came in June 2015 when a group of players announced they were reverse engineering game code to try and create a server for the game, with the revival at that point to be called Battleforge Reborn.
Part of the agreement, according to MrXLink, is that the team cannot release paid DLC or updates for the game, meaning this one will remain a labour of love for those working on it.
It’s almost refreshing in a world filled with fan projects getting slapped down with cease and desist letters to see that license holders and fans are working together to bring once-beloved games back to the fans, but as this project is still at the early stages, it seems likely several publishers and fans will be looking to see how it does, perhaps with one eye on their own potential projects.
EA haven’t yet confirmed the revival on their end, so it could be that we’re about to see the most vengeful C&D of all time delivered to the team behind Skylords Reborn, but that seems excessively bold, so it’s probably okay to assume this is on the level for now.
