Is the Code Combat Hour of Code broken?

I don’t know what category to put this in.

The Hour of Code website still links to CodeCombat: Escape the Dungeon as an Hour of Code Activity. I like this activity, and have been doing with my students for about 5 years now.

Link to what I am talking about.

this website has this link

Today, when we tried, we hit a hard pay wall that I have never seen before. Students had no way to proceed, and if I tried to link them to a future free level CodeCombat was still showing a pay wall. (when I say hard pay wall, I mean the same $10 notice that is shown for blue banner levels, but it is happening on the only red banner level available)

Is CodeCombat still free? The Hour of Code still free?

The hard paywall was on the red banner level “Cell Commentary”, it seemed to happen to students who had made CC accounts and logged in before starting the Hour of Code link.

Students who were playing anonymously didn’t hit the pay wall, but I think they won’t be able to save their progress.

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it isn’t broken, it’s the new update to codecombat because they weren’t getting enough money for the game. read more here

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Thank you for your quick reply. If the CodeCombat content for Hour of Code is no longer free then I will feedback to Code.org to remove their links to this website.

I am sad to see this, as I am a teacher with a lifetime subscription to Codecombat, and I have used Code Combat with hundreds of students for around 4 years now.

I remember not liking the classroom feature so my students always signed up as individuals and all joined a class clan. It was more fun for them to earn xp and gems, and student accounts can’t do that.

I may try the classroom feature again someday, but not right now. I’ve been hyping CodeCombat and Hour of Code to my classes for weeks. Frankly, this change crashed and burned all of my lesson plans for yesterday and I’m still feeling grouchy about it …

Thanks again for responding so quickly.

Joseph Borges
STEAM teacher and technology coordinator for La Contenta Middle School

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Thank you for supporting this amazing game for so long. I understand what you are saying and I really hope this doesn’t stay this way. So I hope you have luck finding and doing other lessons in other places. Again, thank you for supporting this game. Have a good day.

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Welcome back! It seems like CoCo’s HOC program is now using Ozaria, its more classroom oriented version.

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The Hour of Code activity should still be free when coming in through the Hour of Code link. Are the students who are seeing the paywall coming in through that link even after making their accounts, or are they just going to codecombat.com and starting to play from there? Let me take a look today to see what’s going on with that flow.

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