Clockwork Labs

Clockwork Labs is a video game developer building massively-multiplayer "societal games" that de-emphasize combat in favor of social interaction and cooperation among players. Its stated aim is to support creative collaboration in large, persistent virtual worlds, and it frames game development as a combination of art and hard engineering problems in computer science and distributed systems [0][1].

The company's first project is BitCraft, described as an MMO community sandbox game set in an enormous, fully editable, procedurally generated landscape hosted in a single unsharded world, supporting a range of playstyles and specializations with emphasis on cooperation over combat. BitCraft was announced in September 2021, entered Pre-Alpha testing in 2021, and was targeted to move into Alpha testing in 2022 [3]. Alongside the game, Clockwork Labs develops database technology that powers it; a company GitHub organization hosts SpacetimeDB (described as "Development at the speed of light", written in Rust), the open-source BitCraft server code, SDKs for C# and TypeScript clients, Unity libraries, and demo projects such as Blackholio and a SpacetimeDB-based Minecraft server implementation [2].

As of the June 2022 Series A announcement, the company was fully remote, privately owned, and recruiting compiler, database, and distributed systems engineers, with the stated intent to make its foundational technology available to other developers as a standalone product [3]. A secondary-market listing profile describes the company as headquartered in San Francisco, CA and lists Alessandro Asoni as founder and Carter Minshull as lead game designer [4]; note that the same listing states a founding year of 2017 while the company's own press release states the company was founded in 2019 in San Francisco [3][4].

Founding story

Clockwork Labs was founded in San Francisco, California, with the goal of applying its founders' engineering backgrounds in distributed systems to video games; the company states it was founded by engineers with strong computer science backgrounds. Named co-founders include Alessandro Asoni and Tyler Cloutier. The company's own 2022 press release gives a founding year of 2019, while a secondary-market listing page states 2017 [3][4]. The studio credits Skycatcher, a games-focused investment fund based in Texas, with providing the first major funding that jumpstarted the project [3].

Business model

Clockwork Labs is a privately owned, venture-backed game developer. It develops and operates its own MMO title, BitCraft, and separately develops the underlying database/distributed-systems technology (SpacetimeDB), which it has stated an intent to make available to other developers as a standalone product [3]. Portions of its technology, including SpacetimeDB and the BitCraft server code, are published publicly on GitHub under open-source licenses such as Apache-2.0 [2].

Traction

BitCraft was announced in September 2021 and reported broad positive reception; Pre-Alpha testing began in 2021 with Alpha testing targeted for 2022 [3]. The company reported plans to scale its team considerably following its Series A and had attracted staff from developers such as Ubisoft and publishers such as Kakao [0][1][3]. Public GitHub metrics show SpacetimeDB at about 25,100 stars and roughly 41 repositories in the organization [2]. BitCraft received a gameplay reveal trailer and preview coverage from outlets including IGN, Digital Trends and the Mercury News in April–May 2024 [4].

Latest developments

Publicly listed press mentions from 2024 include a BitCraft gameplay reveal trailer and previews describing a social sandbox MMO and "BitCraft: Age of Automata" [4]. The company's GitHub organization shows continued development across SpacetimeDB, its SDKs and related projects, with repository updates listed through 2026 [2].