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History and Milestones

Here are recorded some of the external history items, which have a link to B.A.T. ry or BatMUD. The history within the game, is found from inside the game itself.
 
 

April, 2020: BatMUD has now been on the Internet for 30 years. Continuously available, continuously in development. As Finnish game developers, the gargantuan feat this represents brings us and our Community great pride and joy. Thank You for playing and participating!

November, 2019: After a massively long wait for the fans, BatMUD has now been made available on Steam store! This first release includes Windows, SteamOS and Linux versions. MacOS to follow later.

May, 2019: BatMUD's Campcon was held for the 20th time, in the middle of 'nowhere', in Clay City, Indiana, United States with a record developer attendance also from Finland!

December, 2018: BatMUD claims a world first by lifting a player's ban that had been in place for more than 10 years and 150 days, with the player now back in game and mudding again. Talk about Christmas spirit and hopefully, lesson learned.

January, 2017: Finnish Museum for Games opens at Vapriikki, in the city of Tampere. BatMUD has been chosen as one game of the hundred presented and preserved as part of the Finnish game design and gaming history. List of games featured at the Vapriikki museum.

December, 2016: BatMUD enrolls into the Steam Greenlight program with its game client and becomes the first of its genre ever to receive the greenlight on Valve Corporation's Steam.

November, 2016: BatMUD had been investigating playability on 'any device', such as the Apple iPad, by utilizing AWS AppStream to stream its game client to the device. Project is discontinued due to AppStream licensing/pricing issue.

March, 2016: Balanced Alternative Techniques ry ("B.A.T. ry") together with Excelsior LLC's technology release executable versions of the game client for Windows, Linux and Mac. These pre-compiled versions no longer require players to have Java JRE (runtime environment) installed on their machines.

April, 2015: Balanced Alternative Techniques ry ("B.A.T. ry") holds BatMUD's 25th year gala at Restaurant Kaivohuone and announces a new card playing game: Bats & Slovenian War Heroes! BatMUD is one of the oldest games and gaming communities of note on the Internet, still thriving! Performances included Barbe-Q-Barbies and Disco Inferno.

April, 2014: BatMUD's game client development is insourced to Balanced Alternative Technologies ry ("B.A.T. ry") from Mythicscape Ltd / Nilisoft, a long-time companion in Batclient development. Previous to establishing a full control, B.A.T. ry had been designing and producing the game client.

August, 2012: BatMUD returns with another Cosplay-competition at the Assembly Summer 2012 festival. A large number of cosplayers join with some extremely well-made costumes and props. 2.700,00 EUR prize money is distributed between the 1st to 6th runner-ups. Finals are held on the main-stage and shown on the big screens, but even with preparations for permissions, the plans to broadcast on AssemblyTV run into copyright-issues, once again.

August, 2011: BatMUD sponsors and hosts the 1st ever Cosplay-competition of Finland's largest computer festival, the legendary Assembly 2011 Summer. While itself being a 'no name' on the cos-scene, the competition is organized in co-operation with Cosplay Finland Tour and Belle Modeste Oy and gives out 1.400,00 EUR as prizes for the Top-3 + surprise gift cards for 4th and 5th place. Such amount to be distributed in a cosplay competition in Finland is previously unheard of and is received with mixed feelings in the Finnish cosplay community.

April, 2010: Balanced Alternative Techniques ry ("B.A.T. ry") holds BatMUD's 20-year anniversary gala at Restaurant Kaivohuone. Read more. The festivities included a full buffet for guests and performances, such as from the band Indica and Babes DJs.

February, 2009: BatMUD halts plans for a creating a mobile device MUD client into major cellphone platform appstores due to an unfortunate death of its planned developer.

July, 2008: Sun Microsystems Inc. requests Batclient to be audited at Applabs. The Sun Audit Program testing for SJPW-332 Batclient, version 1.71 completes successfully and passes the audit.

March, 2008: Batclient, the Official game client for BatMUD is validated by Sun Microsystems Inc. as eligible for the Java Powered logo. B.A.T. ry joins the Sun Partner Advantage Program.

February, 2008: B.A.T. ry publishes a press-release "BatMUD Reports Increased Growth in 2007-2008" to notify of new subscriber attraction to BatMUD.

October, 2007: B.A.T. ry funded BatMUD website renewal project (phase 1) is completed and new web services launched.

September, 2007: BatMUD expands and adds servers to a second data center located in Lauttasaari, a co-location service hosted by Nebula Oy.

August, 2007: BatMUD made the news again, covered by sites such as Inside Mac Games and several other gaming related news-sites. Other on-line gaming sites, such as Massively have written articles about BatMUD since then, resulting in B.A.T. ry being acknowledged as part of the on-line gaming industry.

February, 2007: Related, a 100-page Pro graduation Master's Thesis with the topic "Virtual gift - Trading gifts in BatMUD virtual community" in Cultural anthropology for the University of Jyväskylä was published, written by Anu Ikonen, a non-player in Finnish.

December, 2006: B.A.T. ry releases the first version (v1.00) of the Official game client. What makes this Batclient significant among the many MU* communities is the many steps it takes towards the more modern, graphical gaming environments of more recently published games. The game client is a lightweight, unique Java-based desktop application. See Features and Screenshots. Also notable, the development continues rapidly towards an even more competitive game GUI, in order to overcome the MMOG-playing generation's barriers of playing text-based games. This game client is solely dedicated for playing and subscribing to BatMUD.

October, 2006: BatMUD holds a launch party of Batclient in Las Vegas, Nevada. All attendees get a preliminary, standalone version of BatMUD's game client on an USB stick.

May, 2006: B.A.T. ry publishes a press-release "Balanced Alternative Techniques ry and Mythicscape to Produce Client Platform for Multiuser Internet Games", through PRWeb regarding producing a new Client Platform for BatMUD. Effectively meaning, that BatMUD shifts towards tackling the onslaught of the MMORPGs (or MMOs).

March, 2006: BatMUD moves its servers from the Helsinki University of Technology to be co-located with Magentasites in Leppävaara, an EUnet data center.

April, 2005: BatMUD turns 15, thus an official birthday-gala was held at Kaivohuone (Helsinki, Finland). More than three hundred guests (all were dressed in an evening attire) from all over the world joined the celebration of BatMUD's 15-year long journey. The oldest Finnish newspaper, Keskisuomalainen wrote an article on 19.4.2005 (in Finnish) on the gala. BatMUD's Niklas Lindroos and Christopher Ragusa also attended Notacon 2005 and held a presentation on "The BatMUD community - a biased study in running large global communities on the Internet".

August, 2004: BatMUD participates once again in the Assembly Computer Festival 2004 at the Hartwall Arena with its own booth and distributes hundreds of BatMUD towels and t-shirts to the participants: fuchsia-coloured ladies' cut becomes a huge hit. To the utmost bewilderment of the event organizers, BatMUD also hungs up a 5 meter x 7 meter anime-style banner in the main hall featuring a maiden in distress.

2004: B.A.T. ry applies for the BatMUD™ Trade Mark and BatMUD® is registered as a Trade Mark by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in April 5, 2005. Also, a 91-page Pro graduation thesis emerges from the University of Lapland, themed "Artificial Intelligence in text-based computer games' dramaturgy. Study subjects: Nethack and BatMUD", Audiovisual Mediaculture written by Jussi Huhtala (in Finnish).

April, 2003: Through the years, BatMUD has also been voted "Game of the Month" by several Internet gaming-sites, such as MPOGD.com. It has been for years in the highest top of The MUD Connector's ranking-list for MUDs.

May, 2002: B.A.T. ry receives a Business ID from the Finnish tax authorities (by own request) and is entered into the tax prepayment register. This was preceded by a major overhaul (of 1999 - 2002), during which the B.A.T. ry slowly re-organized itself to become a more effective and productive organization - responding to the professionalism required in running the larger legal entity which B.A.T. ry had become.

October, 1998: BatMUD moves to Niksula, back at the Helsinki University of Technology.

1996: BatMUD receives the Finnish Oiva award, and the game is also prominently featured in many mainstream computer gaming magazines, such as in the Pelit-magazine. In this article, BatMUD receives a 93 points out of 100 score. Also the paper version of The Rolling Stones magazine is said to have covered BatMUD in a small blurb back in the day.

September, 1994: the organization Balanced Alternative Techniques ry was officially registered in the "Joint corporate information system" of the National Board of Patents and Registration and the Tax Administration of Finland.

1991: BatMUD moves to the University of Jyväskylä.

1991: BatMUD moves to the Tampere University of Technology.

April, 1990: BatMUD opens to the Internet at the Helsinki University of Technology.

 
 
For more (incl. non-milestones), see website News archive.