WolfQuest Shutting Down

Five years ago, a little game made by a small group of programmers who work for the Minnesota Zoo. It showed how the wolves survived out in the wild, how they interacted with other wolves, and in later updates actually let you mate and take care of wolf pups. It was funded through grants provided by the National Wildlife Foundation and through people buying merch through their online store. The game was called "WolfQuest" and was kind of ambitious with updates every couple months, multiplayer servers, all while teaching you about wolves without coming out and saying, "Here's a biology lesson!"

Now jump ahead to just a couple days ago when this email was sent out:

As of today, it’s been five years since WolfQuest, episode 1 was released,
and wow, it’s been an amazing journey. Thanks to the National Science
Foundation, Best Buy, and other grants and donations, what started as an
idea for a free, basic educational wolf game has led to four WolfQuest game
releases and over 500,000 registered members worldwide. The WolfQuest Team
would like to thank you for your support over the last five years; it’s
been quite the experience for all of us.

Because of generous donations, store purchases, and forum ad revenue, we
are able to continue to keep all facets of the game and Community Forums
running much longer than expected. However, we no longer have grant
funding so this e-mail is to let you know of upcoming plans for WolfQuest.


WolfQuest Games: the current version of WolfQuest (Survival of the Pack)
will be available for download and gameplay for as long as we can afford
the server. We will eventually remove the multiplayer lexicon so only
phrased chat and no chat options are available, but we hope this phase
won’t take place for many months to come.

WolfQuest Store and Donations: the WolfQuest store will continue to remain
open with clearance sale prices and the current stock of inventory. Once
items sell out, they will not be replaced, and all proceeds will go to the
Minnesota Zoo. Because we will no longer be offering game updates, we have
also stopped accepting donations for WolfQuest. If you’d like to donate to
a worthwhile organization, we recommend looking into wolf and other
wildlife education and conservation organizations.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to log in to the
WolfQuest Community Forums (www.wolfquest.org/bb) and post on the
announcement or the Tips, Hints, and Help section there. This e-mail
address is not monitored. From the entire WolfQuest Team, thank you to
everyone who has played the game, participated in the forums, and otherwise
put in so much time and energy into this project- it’s been quite the
thrilling ride and we’re glad it can continue.

It's sad to see this little game go, but I guess it was inevitable. WolfQuest will be missed. You can still download the game here.

TL;DR: WolfQuest is leaving the internet due to grants from the NWF being cut. Downloads will be available for a limited time.