Where there’s a will (and some talented, incredibly passionate modders), there is always a way in the world of video games. Today said will has manifested in the form of Borderlands Online, an MMO spin-off that was planned to be released exclusively in China as a free-to-play game. A build of that game was found a year ago, and now, it is playable. Neat!

Getting BLOL, as it has been horrendously acronymed, to work was apparently a tall order, with modder EpicNNG saying that the “amount of work that went into this project completely towered over anything I had done one million times over.” There was the initial issue of just being able to get past the login screen, for one, but that isn’t even mentioning the huge amount of work it took to translate the game into English. That whole process even involved having to customise some of the UI and HUD elements, given the difference in character formats.

Over on Jitter, EpicNNG one thing was thankfully made clear: “We wanted to wait until the end of the year to release, but sadly due to how powerful AI is becoming, it became clear that in order to avoid all of our work being for nothing, it was now or never.” Huzzah! In a sea of genAI being used in unofficial projects like this, it’s nice to see instances like this, and recently Banjo Kazooie: Recompiled, opting against the poisonous stuff.

EpicNNG did note that they have received some tip-offs from various sources that claim publisher Take-Two are aware of the project, though they never received anything official themself. Ultimately, though, they “will stop if they tell me to stop.” No money is being made off the project, and it isn’t exactly something that is likely to be revived given its age, but EpicNNG thinks that it will “most likely” be taken down somewhere along the line. So, if you’re at all interested, the time to get involved is now.