After 5 years, NCSoft officially grants a licence to popular City of Heroes private server Homecoming: 'Your accounts and characters are safe'

pcgamer.com:

If you were like me, the shutdown of the GOAT superhero MMORPG City of Heroes broke your heart into itty-bitty pieces—it also probably made you happy to see people playing it again when it was revealed that the game code had been salvaged in 2019. 

Homecoming—alongside a bunch of other servers—promised a return to the good ol' days. I personally had a great time for a couple of years, diving deep into its still-active roleplay community, I even made friends who're still playing it. Still, there's always this looming, Nostralius-style dread that comes with playing on a private server. When will the corpos muscle in and shut down the party?

Turns out: not for a long time. Homecoming has just been given the official nod by NCSoft, as announced by the server today. An announcement reads: «We’d like to make a few things clear: Your accounts and characters are safe. Development of new content will continue. Homecoming will continue to be completely free. We will continue to be funded entirely through donations.»

Meanwhile, the full announcement and FAQ goes into further detail. «Homecoming has been granted a licence to operate a City of Heroes™ server and further develop the game—subject to conditions and limitations under the contract.» The developers expect required funding to increase, but—speaking from personal experience—the monthly donation goals that keep the server running are filled in days, if not hours. People really love this game. 

This does mean that the game is still subject to shutdown, but NCSoft was technically in their rights to call curtains beforehand anyway. Surprisingly, it seems that was never that likely to begin with: «We’ve had a really positive and productive relationship with NCsoft for over four