Again, gaming in general has fallen off my radar in terms of both playing plus this thing called industry news. Recently (in late January), TERA’s console account on Twitter/X happened to post the following (as much as I dislike having to post a link to that platform, it’s the only source):
Tangent: One of the topics I’ve covered and have been involved with covering (not recently though) was the leak of several builds of the server binaries for TERA PC. TERA PC itself had been shutdown completely back in June 2022 but prior to that, the signed server binaries for a quality assurance build of v92.03 had been leaked from their then Taiwanese publisher, HappyTuk.
I myself have setup and have the various leaked builds running locally in what I refer to as TERA Offline. This is for my own use and I’ve put out written tutorials in the past with instructions on how to set one up. There was a time when I was active on RZ. My own interest is from the games preservation point of view. I personally do not agree with how many have chosen to running these private servers though (taking the hard work done/shared freely by folks who simply want a method for preserving the game).
As I’ve written before, this whole private server administrator demographic tends to be run by individuals with control freak tendencies that usually were heavily critical of the usual game publishers, but end up doing things the same way/even worse (without the necessary security expertise, without the budget, and without the infrastructure). To make matters worse, a few of these private servers were compromised.
I also learned that one of the earlier and largest TERA private servers (MT: The Dream aka Menma TERA) had shutdown earlier in 2025. I know there had been earlier rumors of them having received a cease and desist (nothing that had actual official confirmation though). Shortly after, they rebranded from Menma to MT: The Dream which sort of lended credence to the C&D.
They had also begun heavily modifying the v100.02 build (in terms of a lot more client side assets for cosmetics as one example) and well, taking money for this stuff. If there is anything that will draw the ire of corporate legal when it comes to their intellectual property, it’s monetizing it and well, when it is one of the larger private servers, a company will tend to take notice because there is a point where they do need to legally protect their IP in order for their copyrights, trademarks, and patents to remain valid.
Krafton has surprisingly not taken a much more hostile stance to this (besides early in the 2020-2021 timeframe when they tried to play wack-a-mole takedown notices with repositories that hosted the leaked server binaries). But for what is the first time, they publicly acknowledged the existence of TERA PC private servers AND put out a notice from an official console (in this case, their TERA console account; TERA console is operated by Krafton).
Those who are connected online may know about these private servers. But there is a much larger demographic out there which do not follow this stuff and have no idea that past shutdown, such a thing existed (or even a way to run everything themselves to at least have an offline setup which they can run). It’s often times why companies don’t acknowledge their existence because once they do, people who may not have known, now know (and can therefore search and end up learning).
I’ve barely written about the console version post PC shutdown because it’s been mostly a low effort endeavor by Krafton (no actual new changes and often times, lot of downtime and little communication). I’m surprised it is still running in 2026 (I now wrongfully predicted it wouldn’t make it past 2025). Any contractual obligations on the console side would’ve expired in 2025; it’s the last remnant of the MMORPG’s they once developed.
But this short notice confirming that Krafton has not come to any sort of agreement with any private server operations (contradicting that particular German private servers assertion that they did have an agreement), is an interesting one. I mean, it is good to finally know that Krafton does not have any sort of backroom dealings that gives any of these private server operations legitimacy (unlike NCsoft finally granting an official license to a fan operated private server for City of Heroes). Back after TERA PC officially closed, I recall at least one of the private server projects (long dead) that was making some noise of trying to talk with Krafton.
I already knew that something like that would be a no go because it doesn’t matter if you have contacts (unless it’s an actual executive in South Korea that has decision making authority). I know someone who still has contacts and for the most part, MMORPG development is dead inside the company (and will just leave that part at that). What I can write is that executives there don’t care about trying to establish some form of licensing agreement because there is administrative/legal overhead involved with that.
Some of it makes no obvious sense when they killed off TERA PC completely but TERA console (PlayStation and Xbox) remains running (not like it has large numbers). The simplest way I have been looking at it is that Krafton did not want to self publish the PC version because it would’ve meant operating the business front end (for several different regions with their different requirements), the payment flows, and the servers whereas with the console version, that front end and payment flow is handled respectively by Sony and Microsoft while they have someone managing the server which I believe is cross play).
At one point, there were likely contractual agreements (within a 7 year time frame) with both Sony and Microsoft and potentially a development partner on the console side that kept them from pulling the plug. That window has now passed and given this notice by their TERA console account, it doesn’t seem like the console version is going away anytime soon. But then again, this is Krafton where not everything makes logical sense.
