Pirates, Vikings and Knights II is a multiplayer team-based first-person action video game, developed as a total conversion modification on Valve proprietary Source engine. The game is currently in beta development stages, with its first public release on 1 January 2007. The second major public version was released a year later on 7 February 2008. The game is a sequel to Pirates, Vikings and Knights, which was created by three UC Berkeley students (Garrett Moore, Matt Bishop, and Kris Hauser). The original was a modification for Valve's earlier GoldSrc engine. The game is set around three teams, the pirates, the Vikings and the knights—each with distinct classes and abilities—battling in a variety of game modes across various Medieval, Norse and Caribbean environments. As of the fifth major release eight of the eighteen planned classes have been implemented. The game has been received positively by the industry's critics, being praised for its originality and graphical quality. By the end of February 2008, the game has acquired over six and a half million player minutes per month on the Steam content delivery system. Gameplay Pirates, Vikings and Knights II is based around three teams competing for an objective. These three teams, themed around pirates, Vikings and knights, are distinct in classes and capabilities. As of beta 2.3, players can choose one of two classes on each team (the Vikings have a new third class), giving them access to different weapons and abilities. Although beta 2.3 only includes seven classes overall, a full complement of eighteen—six classes per team—are planned in the course of the game's development. The objectives in a Pirates, Vikings and Knights II game is defined by the game mode that is being used; at the moment there are four game modes implemented out of a planned nine. In "booty" games, teams must collect or steal treasure chests distributed across the level and bring them back to their own base to activate a countdown timer to victory. The more chests a team has in its possession, the quicker the timer decreases. A variation on this is the "booty tag" mode, in which there is a single chest and the teams fight for control of the chest to decrease their timer. The third game mode is "territory", in which teams fight for control of a strategic area of their surroundings. When one team holds the territory, their countdown timer activates unless