Vendetta Online shipped as a commercial MMORPG in November 2004 with a subscription-based business model, although it has been running continuously since April 2002.

[2] Vendetta Online is available to play across a wide array of platforms, including the Oculus Rift virtual reality display, allowing all users to directly interact in a single, contiguous galaxy.

[3] The twitch gameplay in Vendetta Online revolves around lining up a correct shot against enemy ships, while avoiding incoming fire.

Ships each have detailed specifications such as mass, thrust, torque, cargo capacity, top speed, turbo energy drain, armor, and weapon ports.

There are a wide variety of weapons in Vendetta Online, some requiring energy to fire, others relying on ammunition, proximity fuzes, target tracking, or some combination thereof.

As most weapons have a cone of fire assisted by autoaim, effectively deploying weaponry relies less on careful aiming than it does on managing the ship's momentum, energy, attitude and distance to target.

The player may take part in the war against the Hive, an ever-expanding race of NPC Robots, vying for control of areas of space containing asteroids rich in valuable minerals.

[7] Player-owned capships are constructed through a series of manufacturing missions, in which the player delivers a list of necessary materials to the station, and receives the resulting components.

Manufactured items, together with the rare ore and components used to create them, form a base leg of Vendetta Online's emerging player economy.

The backstory is written from a historical perspective, from the viewpoint of an Itani monk chronicling the events leading to the galaxy's present state.

GTS can be found throughout the galaxy on projected neon signs outside of space stations, most often advertising goods and services but also sometimes including cryptic messages or humorous phrases.

[10] Vendetta Online's development team is relatively small compared to many other titles in the same genre, at its largest including four people.

[12] In April 2002, the game opened with a public alpha test to prove the efficiency of the twitch style combat in the low bandwidth environment of that era.

Since launch, the development team has maintained Mac, Linux, and PC support for the game,[15] allowing users on all three platforms to play and interact in the same universe.

[35] The PCC is a separate group from the remainder of the player base as an additional emphasis on "Trust, Maturity, Involvement and English"[36] is expected of them.

The PCC is also responsible for helping design Lua code for the game's User Interface, and testing new equipment before it becomes widely available.

The PCC remains an innovative development on the MMO scene, bridging the gap between "sandbox" style player-contributed content and traditional top-down corporate game design, generated in a method reminiscent of Lucas' 'Expanded Universe'.

[45] A more recent review by Kotaku stated that Vendetta was "a deep game with an intuitive interface" taking note of the port to Android mobile devices.