Tactical card battler Duelyst goes open source three years after shutdown

Counterplay Games has released the source code and art assets for its collectible card game, Duelyst, under the OpenDuelyst banner.

The Duelyst servers were shut down by Counterplay in January 2020, around four years after the project launched, but now the studio wants to help players breathe new life into the title.

Counterplay lead producer Dick Heyne said that anybody in the community will now be allowed to extend, modify, and build on the source code for free.

"All of the source code and art assets we've developed at Counterplay Games are available royalty-free on [Github] for you indie developers, hackers, modders, and hobbyists to modify, extend, and remix to your heart's content," noted Heyne in a video update.

"This means you can release your own version of Duelyst. You can make your own card designs, run your own servers, and author your own game modes. Duelyst started on Kickstarter, so in a big way our amazing fans have always been building with us. When we said goodbye to Duelyst live services back in 2020, we always knew we wanted to return and give back to this community."

Counterplay is also working to deploy OpenDuelyst as "Duelyst Classic," which is being billed as a version of the game "exactly as it was in v1.96.17, before the servers were shut down."

The Github repository contains all the information budding modders will need to begin tinkering with the source code, including the desktop clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux and instructions for playing on Android or iOS.

Counterplay has also invited anybody who would like to contribute to OpenDuelyst to join the studio on its dedicated Discord server.