Project History - BostonUnlocked Chronicles
The BostonUnlocked Project is the culmination of many years of effort. This page chronicles its history.
The Original Game
2012-07-18 - Cliffhanger Productions, developers of Jagged Alliance Online, launch a Kickstarter to develop what is known at the time as "Shadowrun Online" (Source 1) (Source 2)
2012-08-14 - "Shadowrun Online" is funded at 110% of its $500,000 goal (Source)
2015-04-28 - Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown (the game's final name) is officially released (Source)
2015-10-22 - The Infected! DLC is released Source
2015-10-22 - The Missions DLC is released Source
2018-11-30 - Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown is shut down and its servers are taken offline, completely disabling access to the game as a result. Cliffhanger Productions initiate work to obtain permission from Microsoft to host the game with its original data at the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE) (Source)
The MADE
c. 2019-01-15 - Microsoft unofficially indicates it is open to the idea of hosting the game at the MADE (Source)
c. 2020-01-15 - Cliffhanger Productions and the MADE work on modernising the server backend (Source)
c. 2020-03 - The MADE closes its doors due to the COVID pandemic and shelter in place government mandates (Source)
c. 2020-04-30 - The MADE continues work to officially host a non-profit version of the game. ZiggyTheHamster works on the project to revive the game (Source)
c. 2020-05-04 - While awaiting Microsoft's full sign-off, work continues on the server backend reimplementation (Source)
2020-08-31 - The MADE decides to go into storage for 2 years due the COVID pandemic. The game revival project goes on hiatus (Source)
2022-06-10 - The MADE reopens its doors (Source)
2020-2025 General Notes - Various issues prevent the game from being revived and existing assets being released to the public. This includes Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in the logs and databases, the code being based off proprietary and outdated dependencies and there being no source code provided. The server binaries therefore had to be decompiled, reverse engineered and reimplemented. (Source 1) (Source 2)
2024-03-16 - OSIAS contacts the MADE to try and get the project going again. Coordinating with gordonfreeman01 (aka dyuom), the history of the project is confirmed to locate the MADE's documentation for the project. ScarlxtPink, who was working on their own private game revival, ends up privately working with the MADE. (Source)
Note: Several members of the community separately try to revive the game with limited results. All projects so far, public and private, only get slightly past the launcher login screen or are incomplete/abandoned. (Source 1) (Source 2) (Source 3)
BostonUnlocked
2024-04-27 - BostonUnlocked Discord Server created (Source)
2024-09-18 - BostonUnlocked GitHub repository created (Source)
2026-02-21 - ShadowAid discusses his version of a private server for the game (Source)
2026-02-22 - BostonUnlocked has its first release by ShadowAid. (Source)
Note: From this point on, the announcement history section of this website details the rapid progress. Game systems come online rapidly but face issues such as AI behaviour, hub synchronisation and mission progression being difficult to restore without access to the original server code.
2026-03-07 - ZiggyTheHamster joins the BostonUnlocked Discord server and grants the project permission to use the decompiled original server binaries at the MADE. This leads to huge breakthroughs across all game systems. (Source)
Present - The work continues, see the Announcements section of this website for the latest developments.