As just about everybody knows, an incident occurred about six months ago with respect to an unauthorized distribution of the NetHack source code in a very unfinished state. Since then, the team has been working on several initiatives. Despite a lot of opinions to the contrary, we aren't dead and we haven't given up on the game.

Over the past months we've added some members of the greater NetHack development community to the team. Specifically; Sean Hunt, Derek S. Ray and Pasi Kallinen are now members of the Team and have been actively helping develop the next release with selected inclusions from some of the NetHack community code bases.

We've also made a significant time investment in upgrades to our underlying development infrastructure, which will be rolled out with the next release. Many thanks to Keni who's been instrumental in making sure the underlying foundations that allow the team to do what it does are there.

Now for the inevitable question: When will the next release happen?

In that respect I'm going to have to fall back on the usual answer - we don't advertise our release dates. To do so would break a long-standing NetHack tradition, but there is a more important reason. Given the amount of time since the previous release, and considering what's been integrated into it, knocking the bugs out of it may not be as easy an exercise as in the past so we're loath to commit to a date and have something throw us off.

For the DevTeam

Mike Stephenson

Recently a NetHack source distribution has appeared, claiming to be NetHack 3.5 or 3.5.0 or 3.4.4.

This claim is partially correct. This is our code. However it was not released by us or with our authorization. This code is not ready for release: it is unfinished, unpolished, and almost certainly very buggy. It has not been play-tested for balance or functionality. It is best considered a partial and unfinished rough draft. We will not be supporting this code, nor will we be releasing binaries or bugfixes for it. It will not be available through our website.

Due to this incident and to prevent confusion, we will not now nor in the future release anything with a version number of 3.4.4, 3.5, or 3.5.0.

We thank those of you who play and develop both NetHack and its many variants for your support and encouragement at this time and over the many years NetHack and its progeny have and continue to evolve.

• NetHack-3.4.2-MacOSX.tar.gz with NetHack-3.4.2-2-MacOSX.tar.gz

• nethack-342-mac-term.sit with nethack-342-mac-term.pkg.sit
• nh342ami.lha with nh342ami-2.lha