21–30 of 86 posts
EA continues to sell C&C RA 2 (and C&C, C&C RA were recently remastered, using the original engine with updated graphics).
It's a bunch of work, often involving lawyers who bill by the very expensive hour, for basically no payoff. On top of that there's a secret in the industry though: there's a lot of maybe not entirely legal code copying going on. Hiring someone who's made a similar game in the past can mean that they come with source code that could be copied to shortcut the time to write code for the new game. Releasing source would…
Even if they're in-house corporate lawyers, it's still a lot of work that is a distraction from their day jobs. And, yes, there may easily be some combination of proprietary libraries and other code that isn't entirely kosher to open source in some way. And, oh, you want the build system for that code? That's something else. In a lot of cases it would involve tossing an incomplete bunch of code over the wall with few…
Minecraft modders deobfuscate and decompile the game every time Mojang publishes a new release so that mods have the symbols to link against. There are way more people out there who want to play old games and have the skills necessary to modernize a game's codebase than there are making those engines, and they have more time and better-aligned incentives. Essentially every game I know of that's been open-sourced has had someone put in the time to get it building again, even things that barely anyone played. Heck, popular frequently have full-blown from-scratch remakes, c.f. the Spring Engine, OpenTTD, OpenRCT2, StepMania.
Doom's code was released because Carmack had a materially different view of IP.
If you look at "open source/open core" threads for enterprise/non-game software, you can see the mindset.
The makers of the game might have creative sympathy or want to inspire future creators.
The owners of the game want to protect and defend their property.
TL;DR: it's a non profit endeavor, and most of these companies don't grok the concept.
It's a bunch of work, often involving lawyers who bill by the very expensive hour, for basically no payoff. On top of that there's a secret in the industry though: there's a lot of maybe not entirely legal code copying going on. Hiring someone who's made a similar game in the past can mean that they come with source code that could be copied to shortcut the time to write code for the new game. Releasing source would…
Not just lifted code but patent-violating code. Ever wonder why GPU makers don't open source their drivers?
They lost it.