The recently announced shutdown of Disney Lorcana’s premiere, albeit unofficial, online client Pixelborn has rocked the TCG’s community. Fans of the game are split on the potential impact of losing Pixelborn.
Disney Lorcana is relatively new in the wider TCG scene but it has been exploding in popularity and availability in recent months. Its mechanically tight gameplay combined with a plethora of beloved IPs seems like a guaranteed recipe for success.
Early in the game’s lifecycle, Pixelborn emerged as a fan-made online client that emulated Disney Lorcana’s tabletop gameplay almost precisely. For that reason, we named it one of the best ways to play Disney Lorcana online.
Therein lies the problem, however. Its near-perfect emulation of the TCG meant that the online client’s days would be numbered from the beginning. It was recently announced by Pixelborn’s creator that they would be shutting down the service at the behest of Disney and the Lorcana community is now mourning its impending absence.
Pixelborn is a feature-complete version of Disney Lorcana that can be played for free online. Developed almost single-handedly by Lorcana fan Pavel Kolev, it gained a successful enough Patreon subscribership to manage server maintenance and development costs.
Kolev himself made the decision to redirect any surplus funds to charities such as Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders. In some instances, sums of over $5,000 were donated.
Unfortunately, not only did Pixelborn do a serviceable job replicating Disney Lorcana’s gameplay, it also housed a complete library of the game’s cards including their artwork. The program’s website gave tutorials on how to upload the images as well as zip files with every single available card including their Enchanted variants.
For this reason, Disney made the decision to request a shutdown of the service to protect their intellectual property. Kolev announced his decision to comply via the Pixelborn Discord Server and shared the message via a post on X.
It breaks my heart to say this. Pixelborn is shutting down. Full announcement in Discord.#Lorcana pic.twitter.com/zuZjpDcYcl
— Pavel Kolev (@PavelKolev7) May 29, 2024
Kolev admitted that the decision had ‘shattered their heart to pieces’ but they maintained that the service would indeed be terminated. “I’ve always stated I would respect such a request, and I plan to keep my word and will not grasp at technicalities. Pixelborn will stop the support for Lorcana before 16th June 2024,” Kolev vowed.
The announcement has fractured the Disney Lorcana community as players attempt to unpack the ramifications of losing Pixelborn. The service has actively shaped the TCG’s competitive meta and economy on a global scale with many competitive decks used in official comps emerging from the program.
Card costs rose and fell on the back of their success in the Pixelborn meta and it served as a valuable resource for testing and preparing for tournament play. For many players in remote regions or without local scenes, it became an accessible way to engage with Disney Lorcana.
Sentiment within the player community is split. There are those who believe that the Pixelborn shutdown will have no impact on the health of the game whatsoever and others who think it spells an early doom for Disney Lorcana.
“I personally see myself losing some interest in the game as the ability to play every day makes me want to play and invest in the game more,” one Lorcana player said in response to the shutdown. “I might stop playing Lorcana because of this decision,” another replied.
Veteran TCG players have pointed out methods for the sort of testing that Pixelborn engendered which have been present in the hobby for a long time. “You print proxies and test at home or in person with friends and a league, and then go to tournaments once you’ve tuned the deck and bought the cards,” one user advised.
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Unfortunately for some Lorcana fans, this isn’t feasible or desirable. “I have no interest in hanging out at an LGS testing decks that may or may not work,” a player explained. “If I’m going to spend my free time actually going somewhere to play, I want to make sure the deck works first, which is why Pixelborn was great.”
Aside from the potential impacts on players, content creators who used Pixelborn as a means of easily streaming Lorcana are losing a valuable tool. Not all of them are convinced that the loss of Pixelborn means the end of the game, however.
Longtime Disney Lorcana content creator Speci Lorcana has been a fixture of the game’s online community for some time. Primarily focusing on deck building and competitive play, his expertise saw him tapped to cast one of the first Disney Lorcana Challenge events in Lille, France.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding the TCG following the Pixelborn shutdown, Speci remains optimistic about the state of the game. He isn’t blind to the importance of Pixelborn to Disney Lorcana’s overall success of course.
“It would be remiss to say that Pixelborn has not helped the game in a lot of ways,” Speci qualified in a video going over the shutdown. “I think without Pixelborn, the game would not be as popular as it currently is. I know many people who have picked up the game as a direct result of having the opportunity to play on Pixelborn.”
Primarily, he acknowledged the platform’s role in facilitating a powerful free marketing engine for the TCG. “Pixelborn has provided many streamers opportunities to easily make Disney Lorcana content accessible in, what is otherwise, a very difficult game to make content for.” The necessity of expensive equipment, space to play, and physical products may cause a possible gap in this area.
Even with those considerations, Speci isn’t ready to call time on Disney Lorcana as a whole. After casting an event that saw over 2,000 competitors come together to play the game, it’s easy to understand why.
“I think Disney Lorcana is going to continue to go from strength to strength,” he posited. Particularly if Disney and Ravensburger can capitalize on the outcry for an official digital client of their own.
“We’ve seen how popular Pixelborn is, imagine how popular an official Lorcana client would be,” Speci put forward. “They’ve got a lot of work on their hands to match what Pixelborn was able to do,” he qualified. “The quality of this client was tremendous.”
Like most players in the Disney Lorcana community, he did acknowledge Disney’s right to protect their IP, even at the expense of a well-loved fixture. “I definitely think Pavel is making the right decision to shut it down as he’s been approached to do so.”
Disney’s reasoning for the shutdown may be as simple as protecting their copyright but it has begged the question ‘why now?’ Pixelborn had been allowed to run for over 12 months before they put a stop to it.
It’s possible that now that Disney Lorcana is available in more countries and stock of each individual set is more widely available, the company felt it was the right time. Many are hopeful that this is an indication of an official online client on the horizon.
We’ve reached out to Disney for clarification on the matter and will be sure to update this article with a response.