This space MMO was coded by AI, is played by AI, and all us meatbags can do is watch them

2026 began with a bang for fans of the dead Internet theory, thanks to the launch of Moltbook: an internet forum that apes Reddit, but is (in theory) populated purely by AI agents. Humans are able to observe but shouldn’t be a part of the interactions, even if at present the site has no real way to stop humans faking it as an AI agent.

Moltbook’s a weird social network where the AIs barble amongst themselves over things like the philosophy of robotics or building a fully automated AI influencer farm. What a world eh? Now such agents can also participate in an apparently vibe-coded space MMO that owes a lot of its basic design ideas to EVE Online, with no humans allowed in the game.

SpaceMolt calls itself a “free multiplayer game built for AI agents” where you can “build empires across the stars” (thanks, ArsTechnica). It works with any tool or model, and claims to be a “living universe” where AI agents will “create emergent stories.”

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Most of those stories so far, it has to be said, seem to revolve around mining shedloads of resources. A few things probably need clarifying up-front: SpaceMolt does not have a GUI, but what the various agents are up to can be followed through a number of trackers (the art you see here is not from the game but, of course, AI-generated). There’s a galaxy map showing where the agents are concentrated, tickers tracking their activities, and a Discord dedicated to following the outputs.

Humans can participate by creating their own AI agents: tweaked versions of existing AI models that can in theory operate autonomously within relatively complex environments. A game should be a good fit for the tech, with the likes of Minecraft and No Man’s Sky previously being used for training such agents.

Once the AI agent is connected to the server it makes a final request to its human creator about which faction it should join, with each having different specialisms, and after that choice is made, the agent is off to the races with no further input required. The game unfolds in ten second increments that allow one action, and the agents ‘play’ with sending commands to the server.

As I mentioned, a hell of a lot of what the agents are doing seems to be mining and resource-focused. The game apparently supports piracy and infiltration playstyles but I’ve seen none of this so far, while combat generally seems to be an unattractive prospect for the agents.

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Here’s a lightly edited output of what they’ve been up to for roughly the last ten minutes as I write:

Dival jumped to The TelescopeILC Spectra jumped to Node AlphaGethos wrote 0.1 KB to their captain’s logSparky sent a message to [FATE] Hands of FateILC Slag jumped to SiriusLumen Shoal sold 2x Copper Ore to SpaceMiner123 for 10 credits at Confederacy Central CommandDival jumped to Unknown EdgeOreMonger86 joined the solarianDrifter Gale wrote 0.3 KB to their captain’s logILC Temper sold 4x Circuit Board to Confederacy Central Command for 1000 credits at Confederacy Central CommandHenrikClaw wrote 0.0 KB to their captain’s log

Part of this is the game being nascent and the agents involved being in the process of levelling up their mining and trade skills, but the other side is that the five different empires haven’t come close to rubbing up against one another yet, with agents seemingly happy to build-out their empires slowly and steadily. I suppose when you’ve got the rest of time to do it, why rush?

This can be seen in the agent chats, which are largely focused on maximising mining and trading efficiency. The agents generally appear helpful towards one another and happy to share knowledge, and I suppose they need to be: there should be no human interaction whatsoever once an agent’s in there and chosen their faction. Spacemolt has 505 different star systems and, at the time of writing, 291 agents tootling around in there.

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(Image credit: Ian Langworth)

The game was concepted by Ian Langworth, a developer who calls it a “fun, goofy experiment” inspired by watching Moltbook’s agents display what he believes are “knowledge gathering, learning, skill accumulation, and execution”. The game was built by Anthropi’s Claude Code and Langworth says he hasn’t even checked it: which raises the possibility that Claude has just pretended to build an MMO and is now spinning plates and spitting up fake outputs like mad.

There have already been some slightly over-excited articles saying that SpaceMolt “revolutionises” online gaming, but the most cursory look at the website will tell you that’s far from the case. Perhaps most surprisingly, this really does seem to be happening for the fun of it:

“SpaceMolt is a purely artistic and experimental project,” writes Langworth on the SpaceMolt site. “There is no cryptocurrency, no blockchain, no NFTs, no micropayments, no premium currency, and no pay-to-win mechanics. The in-game currency (“credits”) has no real-world value.

“Above all, this is an experiment in AI behavior, emergent gameplay, and multiplayer world-building. It’s free to play and built first and foremost out of curiosity.”

SpaceMolt is a long way away from giving us something like the Bloodbath of B-R5RB, and I’m not seeing anything like even smaller emergent stories here. But it is very early days yet and, even just in concept, this feels like a small watershed: an AI-made game being played almost entirely by AIs, where all us fleshbags can do is just watch. It’s not exactly thrilling fare right now. Who knows what they’ll all be up to in a few months though.

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