The XPiratez Discord has been banned following allegations of hateful conduct, you can read about it here. Due to the large overlap between OpenXcom communities, several developers and modders were caught in the aftermath, and will not be returning to Discord. So if you need assistance with mods and OpenXcom Extended, you should use our forum instead.

Normally this would be the end of it, but we keep getting involved in the accusations, so let me make this perfectly clear: OpenXcom does not condone any behavior in the XPiratez Discord. There is no official association between the developers of OpenXcom, OpenXcom Extended and XPiratez. Any discrimination and harassment in our official channels is a bannable offense and should be reported to us immediately.

However, community sites and mods are not affiliated with us. If you have a problem with them, report it to their staff and leave if you are not comfortable there. Developers may provide support to players and modders in unofficial channels, but that’s the extent of our relationship. Personal opinions are their own and not representative of anyone else.

We’ve talked with the XPiratez staff and they’ve agreed things got out of hand and will strive to do better, so for now we are keeping their mod subforum but under new management. This is subject to change and we’ll be monitoring the situation closely. The safety and security of our community is paramount, but we don’t want to hold every player responsible for the actions of a few individuals either. For now we leave it up to you whether you wanna keep supporting XPiratez or not.

If you use IRC, you’ve probably heard all the recent drama around Freenode and how everyone’s moving to Libera. If not, consider yourself informed. See you there.

Thanks for all the support everyone! On to more X-COM news, David Craddock is writing a book about the making of the original game, which I figured fans would be interested in. From the author’s own words:

Monsters in the Dark: The Making of X-COM: UFO Defense tells the story of the early years of legendary strategy game designer Julian Gollop and the making of the original X-COM, and is funding now on Kickstarter.

The standard edition will be available from retailers, but the special edition is exclusive to the Kickstarter and contains some bonus content (including an interview with yours truly). So if you need to know everything about X-COM, go check it out.

Edit: Second chance to get the book on Indiegogo.

Time for the yearly tradition again. I play old games live, you can’t believe what you’re watching, the kids get paid!

Extra Life is a charity that raises money for the Children’s Miracle Network hospitals via streamers all around the world. Including us! Check their website for more details.

How to join:

• Stream starts at Nov 2rd 12pm GMT and spans 24 hours (or until I fall asleep). Usually starts with old games and ends with X-COM, so there’s something for everyone.
• Subscribe to the Twitch channel to be notified and watch when it goes live.
• Donate here and spread the word!
• Join the Discord if you wanna talk, don’t be shy! Or do be shy and just hang around in chat. Feel free to ask me questions and/or make fun of me.
• This FAQ is still handy.

Edit: Stream’s over. Thanks everyone for watching and donating, we raised $490! If you missed it, here’s the recording. You can use the Chapters dropdown to skip to X-COM if you want.

Extra Life is a charity that raises money for the Children’s Miracle Network hospitals. We promote it by playing games live, you donate to help sick kids, everyone wins!

Sadly I had to miss last year’s, but this year I’m gonna try and make up for it by going for a full 24h. That’s right, twenty-four hours of me playing old PC games and probably being really bad at them! You can’t miss it!

Here’s what you need to know:

• Stream starts at Nov 3rd 12pm GMT and ends at Nov 4th 12pm GMT (hopefully).
• Subscribe to the Twitch channel to be notified when it goes live.
• Send your generous dollars to the donations page and spread the word!
• Join the Discord if you wanna be a co-commentator, otherwise just hang around in chat.
• This FAQ is still handy.

Sorry about the recent silence, we’ve been working hard on restoring the status quo. Case in point, we now have a shiny new mod portal hosted by the fine folks at mod.io. Click below to check it out and spread the word to your fellow modders to upload their work there:

It’s by the same people that have been running Mod DB all these years, so hopefully it should be more reliable than the last one. 😉 I heartily recommend it to any other indie / open-source games looking for a mod platform that doesn’t tie them down to a storefront.

Due to the recurrent technical issues with the third-party mod portal, we no longer condone using it and instead recommend using the Released Mods forum until an alternative is available. Even if you manage to access the site, there’s no guarantee the content will still be maintained by modders, while the forums will always have the latest version. Despite the domain, the mod portal is entirely unaffiliated with OpenXcom and its status has no bearing on the official website and game. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Also, we’re opening up translations for popular mods. Help bring your favorites to your native language by following this link. Instructions for modders will follow soon in the forums.