I still do but most of our interests shifted to finance

I think about SubSpace every month or so. 1997-1998 was a pretty special time for the Internet and its denizens!

You do know it was revitalized by the community after it was shutdown? I played primarily from 2000-2009ish and then fell off after college.

Why think about it when you can play right now? [0]

It was this game that got me into technology and programming. Implementing bots to run king of the hill or elimination style games.

A bit of history..

One of the original programmers (Jeff P? maybe) included the server software along with the client with the CD. After SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) ended the game, the community ressurected the game by using the included server software.

After many years of cheats due to the stagnating closed-source client, PriitK (of KaZaA and later Skype fame) reimplmented the client from scratch with better encryption, and named it Continuum. It still communicated with the original server software.

Years later, someone would reimplement the server side software named ASSS (a small subspace server) giving complete freedom to implement certain gamemodes and features wanted by the community for decades. For awhile you could only connect to "third party" servers which was a lot scarier and used a different chat/name/etc service than the main zones. It took a few years, but eventually PriitK give access to the encryption code and now most servers and zones are hosted by ASSS.

It was still limited by the original Subspace/Continuum client features though.

Maybe 5 or so years ago the community got the game on Steam Greenlight and we expected a bunch of new users. It didn't really plan out that way but it was fun while it lasted. It didn't happen earlier because while the entire game at this point had been re-implemented by the community - it still used original graphics which were stilled owned by SOE. Somehow, it got done though.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum...

I did not know any of that, that's amazing! I remember the beta coming to an end, but don't remember whether I bought the game or not. My friend group moved on to other things, and I never bothered to look it up.

Too bad to miss the renewal five years ago.