Deepworld

We’ve had a wild ride. Together, we’ve built a truly unique experience over the years. Six whole years, to be exact! But as all things must end, so must Deepworld.

Last year, we put hundreds of hours of work into giving Deepworld new life. We launched on Android and drastically improved the PC experience. We released a number of server updates including daily challenges, minigames, and more. Unfortunately, we were unable to sustain any real growth. That leaves us today with a game that is no longer profitable, and one we are hard pressed to support given our full-time jobs.

We respect our community, so we want to give Deepworld a proper goodbye. With our remaining funds, we can operate the game and forums until the end of August, at which point both will shut down permanently.

Q&A

Could Deepworld have been saved somehow?

That’s a difficult question to answer. The mobile game landscape has changed a lot since we started Deepworld. Most successful online games these days have gigantic marketing budgets and take years to see a profit. As a pair of developers with full-time jobs (and little cash to burn on advertising), it’s basically impossible for Bytebin to compete with those other games, even if we were to continue releasing new content like we did last year.

Will there be a way to run private servers after the shutdown?

No. Unfortunately, Deepworld’s server architecture is prohibitively complex (and old). It involves several different server applications running on different cloud providers, all properly configured to work together, all of which costs a lot of money.

Will there be a way to play Deepworld offline after the shutdown?

No. Since Deepworld uses a network pipeline for nearly all of its dynamics, creating an offline mode would involve a complete rewrite, and that is not a time commitment we can make.

What will happen to our worlds?

We plan to provide a way to access world data, and hopefully even images, after the shutdown. I will keep you posted on the progress.

What will happen to the forums?

The forums are expensive, so it’s necessary for us to shut them down. However, we can obtain an archive of all the images uploaded, so we hope to provide a way for the many amazing Screenshots of the Day to live on into eternity 🙂

Is there another place we can chat?

I think this is as good a time as any to plug the Discord channel as a place to stay in touch! Link here: https://discord.gg/eBPGd3W

Also, if we ever have any official Deepworld news to put out in the future, you’ll always find it first at our Twitter account. Link here: https://twitter.com/deepworldgame

Can we get refunds?

No. Unfortunately, our funds are very limited and keeping the game alive through August is all we can do. Like any online business, purchases made in Deepworld are governed by the terms of service, and those terms dictate that the business may not last forever. If it provides any solace, your purchases are the only reason we are able to continue operating for three more months. As it stands, it would be better financially for us to shutdown without warning, but we prefer to give Deepworld and its players a proper sendoff.

Is anything interesting going to happen in the next three months?

Absolutely! Since we’re riding off into the sunset, we might as well do it with a bang. Expect bigger worlds, more brains, cheaper stuff, and probably a bunch of other random shenanigans.

Will the crown store still be available?

Yes, and we will be heavily discounting items as we get closer to shutdown. Any contributions you make will be greatly appreciated by the devs, since we still have work to do in order to make sure world data is available post-shutdown, etc.

Final Thoughts

If other pertinent questions arrive, we will be sure to post them here. Thank you for participating with us in this amazing six-year long journey. It’s been our pleasure to make this weird and wonderful world with you.

Deepworld’s End

After the game’s official shutdown on August 30th, 2019, Bytebin released the source code to Deepworld’s servers and website on GitHub. Bytebin also pledged to release public world and forum data in the future, though this has seemingly never materialized. In 2023, Brainwine, a private server compatible with Deepworld, was released.

Despite the server shutdown, the game remains available for download on Steam as of 2024 due to an oversight.