Tiny Speck's Glitch Goes Back Into Beta

Two months ago, social developer Tiny Speck launched Glitch, a casual browser-based MMO headed up by key Flickr founders and co-developed with Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi. Today, Tiny Speck announced that it has pushed the game back into beta to make some large-scale revisions. On the official Glitch blog, Tiny Speck co-founder Stewart Butterfield said, "There are two obvious and huge improvements we need to make: the first is to make the early game reveal itself more easily to new players so they can get into the fun faster." "The second and larger task is to give those players who have gotten over that initial hump and fallen in love with the game -- spending dozens or even hundreds of hours playing -- the creative tools that they need to change the world in more tangible ways: building whole new locations themselves, designing new buildings, setting up resource flows and forming flexible organizations to create bigger things together," he continued. "Some fairly radical changes to core game mechanics are going to be necessary to make Glitch what it needs to be. And making radical changes to core game mechanics is something that’s a lot harder to do while the front doors are open," Butterfield said. While in beta, the game will continue to run, though new registrations will now use a queue system, and existing players can expect slower response times from game moderators. Tiny Speck said there are currently no plans to reset players' progress, but noted that plans can change, and new systems "won’t map perfectly to the new ones." As compensation for players who have already spent money on the game, Tiny Speck is offering a full refund via Glitch's official website. The company did not mention when it expects to officially re-launch the game.