First launching in 1977, Zork was a series of text-based adventures games that influenced the creation of MMORPGs.
Microsoft, Team Xbox, and Activision have done an interesting service to game preservation this week. The trio have compiled and made open source the entirety of the classic Zork text-based adventure game series. Interested parties can now dig into and toy with the code of Zork, Zork 2, and Zork 3.
Microsoft announced the open sourcing of the Zork series in a surprise blog post on its Open Source webpages. There, it was revealed that these three games were compiled and made open-source with licensing from the IP holders at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and with the help of Internet Archive curator Jason Scott:
🕹️ No graphics. No joystick. Just words and a virtual machine. Zork I–III are now under MIT License and available as open source. Study the original Z‑Machine and journey back to simpler times: https://t.co/zLrgZfdlv5 pic.twitter.com/0HuEuGEBXK
— Open at Microsoft (@OpenAtMicrosoft) November 20, 2025
The first Zork was originally released in 1977 by developers at MIT for the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-10 mainframe computer, and licensed through accompanying company Infocom for distribution before Activision eventually bought Infocom and the Zork license in 1986. It was one of the first text-based adventure games to allow commands past two words, allowing for more complex gameplay. The entire trilogy was also said to have popularized a style of multi-user domain (MUD) games that eventually led to the first rudimentary massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). That, and many other reasons, are why Zork is considered to be one of the most important games ever, and why it has a permanent place in the Shacknews Hall of Fame.
With the Zork trilogy now open source, intrepid programmers, historians, and curators can dig in and see what made it tick. For more updates, stay tuned to our topic on game preservation.
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