And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
As I understand it, something like that happened with the game, Alliance. It was a RTS where humans had to control all the units that the commander build and ordered around.
I learned about this, probably 15 years ago, and I never played, so a lot of this might be outdated or just plain wrong.
I think Microsoft published the game, and eventually abandoned it. It still had a thriving mod community but they were struggling due to the lack of source code and support. Apparently, years after working on the game, one of the designers happened across an Internet forum talking about the struggles they were having. The designer then went back to his bosses and said, “We abandoned this years ago, can I just give them the source code?” I guess they did and since then the mod started making HUGE fundamental changes to the game.
Magewars had a brief revival
Not quite the same, but Total Annihilation and Beyond All Reason. It wasn’t abandonware, but more like after Total Annihilation hit success, rights were sold and resold and Atari as the final owner squandered every opportunity to do more with the engine and the franchise.
The tactics were essentially receating a better engine with Spring, as the sort of newly open source upgraded version of the engine the same people built 10 years earlier. Taylor Swift did the same thing.
Thanks! That sounds more like a rewriting of the engine though?
It is, but that’s the workaround they went for, and it worked just fine in a legal sense. It was probably faster and less expensive than trying to engage in anything thats going to even risk involving a copyright attorney.
Makes sense, thanks.
The history of city of heroes might interest you.
Came here to point out CoH!
Thank you!
OpenTTD or OpenRTC possibly could qualify here?
Thanks! Those sound more like rewrites though?
Yeah I think technically they did re-write them, but the actual gameplay, graphics, and music is identical to the original
That’s cool. That would be something to consider if the developer will absolutely not entertain the idea.
Warzone 2100 is an RTS that fans petitioned a company to release as FLOSS, after support had ended.
Thank you!
And it’s fun. I still play it when I have time.
The developer of Terraria promised to open source the canceled sequel if a petition could get enough signatures but then it did and he didn’t release the code
Thanks! That’s lame!
I haven’t heard of this. Surely Red is just finishing terraria first .-.
Plenty of devs think it’s easier than it is. A ton of games are built on proprietary tools, and then you get into legal hot water on whether you can even give away things like the soundtrack or assets you bought like stock sound effects.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they looked at it after the petition and thought “wait, I actually can’t open source this”
Winamp dumping a bunch or proprietary information on GitHub is a good example of this.
I totally get that, but if that was the reason maybe he could have explained it? Maybe he did? I don’t know.
!principia@sopuli.xyz was developed as a commercial title a few years back. I believe, @ROllerozxa@sopuli.xyz contacted the devs to get it open-sourced.
Cool, thank you for the reference! If I decide to pursue something like this, I will know someone to ask questions to.
Star Wars Galaxies.
Thank you!
Does rewriting the game count? https://2009scape.org/
The server is a rewrite from scratch and the client is a decompiled and deobfuscated binary from January 2009
oh wow, uh, my IP is blocked from accessing that website
Must be in the UK
Yeah, but… why?
Legal reasons, Jagex being a UK company
Thanks! Not quite. The idea I have in mind is to avoid having to rewrite it, if possible. Besides, I don’t think I’d have the wherewithal to do it.
Early Dooms and Quakes https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM but they aren’t open source for the reasons you wanted.
No problem, thanks!
Freespace 2 comes to mind. The whole game engine was open source not just the game itself. Looks like there is still a community building on it too. https://scp.indiegames.us/
Does the Unity release of Daggerfall count?
What’s the story with that one? Was the original game open-sourced, or is it a rewrite?
Edit: never mind, I just saw the other reply that it was reverse engineered.
Not at all. The reverse engineering they had to do is insane
Ur-Quan Masters (aka. Star Control 2)
But, it’s not really abandoned anymore. The developers are FINALLY making an official sequel!
The sequel is not open source, but UQM/SC2 is.
This happened in the early 2000s, but I think they found the source code to a port of the game and said “We haven’t earned any money from sales of this game in a decade [and buying digital games wasn’t really a thing yet, as people generally believed that anything digital shouldn’t have a price], so let’s release this to the community to open source as long as they do all the reverse porting and support!”
Thank you!
This was my favorite game as a kid. Doing fan-art and a D&D campaign about it for years got me hired on as an artist for the new one! It’s gonna be wild.
Congrats!! As I’m sure you can imagine, I am incredibly excited for COI!
Hawken was recently brought back from the dead by a few insanely dedicated fans.
Thanks! What did they do?
Mechromancy, I guess. I genuinely don’t really know.
No worries, I’ll check it out, thanks!
