Technically SubSpace is not "freeware", but nobody cares enough for it to be anything else. Continuum is a freeware engine clone (and graphics) of a copyrighted game, SubSpace. Virgin Interactive Entertainment produced the game SubSpace. It had an unusually long beta period to test the feasibility of massive multiplayer gaming. The game's beta was heavily advertised, but the release of the game was hardly noticed at all. The playerbase however did not carry over from Beta to release. Many of the public zones like Rabbit died with the introduction of server software that came with the game allowing people to create their own zones & settings. The real bombs-*BAD WORD*- came when VIE went out of business. VIE US liquidated their !@#$%^&*ets. Everyone playing SubSpace at that time had no idea where the rights lay. However, Blackie, part of the BURST team, kept the VIE SubSpace servers running for as long as possible. However in the end, they were shut down. Before this time, Blackie had !@#$%^&*igned moderators and head moderators for the VIE zones. Thus was the term "Vangel" born in SubSpace. Another consequence of VIE's abandonment of the game was the creation of Twister by Sage386 (and Twister 2, etc ...). When Twister was released mods everywhere were kicking out users over and over just to have them come back. The creation of the unified billing server, BaudChaser's "World Domination Plan", and the era of Mod Squads took place. The culture of having to choose mods for zones begins here. The billing server also came with a council of leading or important people in the community. This was to basically replace the old "Cult of the Final Call" in being the last defense of the game we loved. Skipping ahead a bit, one player began getting attention for his bots and general knowledge of SubSpace. Yes, this was Priitk. Once BanG was created it sealed the fate of the cheating problem. Another note is the council's quest to find the ownership. Fiery was involved with contacting VIE UK, which had the rights, earlier. Then it was found later that BDE had purchased the rights. There's some boring story about Nfocipher that's not too important there (and more recently the Horizon attempt). Then came Continuum. And the community began to grow once more. At the height of cheating there probably weren't more then 120 simultaneous players online. *sniffle* However, Continuum as free begins at the public release of Continuum.
