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Ask HN: Why do games companies not release source code for old games?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do games companies not release source code for old games?

#31

Post by jccalhoun »

As others have said, there are multiple reasons:

1) they may not even have it. The source code for lots of classic games have been lost. By some estimates at much as 90% of pre-2000 source code is gone. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/01/saving-video-gamings-...

2) the game may use code from other companies or libraries or something that they don't own.

3) it might even be unclear who actually owns the source code now.

4) it isn't worth the time to get things straightened out. Nightdive studios tried to rerelease No One Lives Forever and the companies that might possibly own the game hadn't digitized the contracts and either weren't interested in the hassle or wanted Nightdive to pay them to take the time to look and promised to refund them if they didn't. https://kotaku.com/the-sad-story-behind-a-dead-pc-game-that-...

Re: Ask HN: Why do games companies not release source code for old games?

#34

Post by viraptor »

Waterluvian wrote: post #7

I’m not disagreeing with you, but I think the actual question is “how can we make games companies profit meaningfully by releasing their source code?”

Each big release so far generated a news cycle about that company. It could be profitable for them to opensource something around another release. "Company X (released Foo3 last month) open sourced Foo1 today." is a nice headline they'd get for almost free.

Re: Ask HN: Why do games companies not release source code for old games?

#35

Post by hirako2000 »

Would then get requests, why does it not compile.

Simple 3 component apps don't even have CICD. Games? Mike built that binary and scp'd it on the box. I know we need it to build the map editor to build the next level, Don't ask him for a new build he's been in a bad mood his linux jamed, he may rebuild it, wait for Xmas.

Re: Ask HN: Why do games companies not release source code for old games?

#36

Post by noduerme »

sdwr wrote: post #27

One answer I haven't seen yet is that the makers and the owners of the game are often different people. 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.

Conversely, some makers do keep control. I don't know how common it is these days, probably not at all in AAA games, but I've been contracted in small-studio-land for some things on an hourly basis where I insisted on keeping the right to reuse and open-source any utilities or nifty shaders or logic I wrote, as long as what I reused wasn't recognizable as part of the paid project. This is how I built my own toolchains and frameworks over 20+ years; I'd get paid to build a CMS or an app from the ground up, and then I'd reuse the framework in subsequent projects, improving and modernizing it each time along the way. In at least one instance I ended up having rights to the source code for a startup that got sold to a major company who did not want any of that out there, but sucks for them... because 80% of that stuff was already adapted from work I'd done for other clients under a similar arrangement.

Re: Ask HN: Why do games companies not release source code for old games?

#37

Post by msl09 »

jayd16 wrote: post #20

There's no incentive to do so. It takes time and money to ensure you're not releasing proprietary code you don't own. It likely stops you from ever re-releasing it, even if that's very unlikely.

I understand that binary libraries can be owned by a different company. But if you strip all that could the resulting code still be infringing the copy rights of third parties? I never worked at a company where someone else's source was integrated to our tree so I can't tell.

Re: Ask HN: Why do games companies not release source code for old games?

#38

Post by bisby »

ammo1662 wrote: post #32

A game is not only just source code, but also art design, sound, music, movie, etc,. These materials may be produced by some other companies, their contracts may not allow them to be published in public.

Then don't release those things.

id open sourced the Doom3 engine, but didn't open the game assets. People ported it to linux. If you wanted to play doom3 on linux, you still legally needed to own the game to get the assets, you just had an open source way of running those assets on linux.

Open sourcing of the doom engine is basically why "this literal toaster runs doom" is a meme now.

Plenty of old enough games will just reverse engineer and rebuild the game engine open source from scratch. OpenMW comes to mind. And they even provide links on where to buy Morrowind in their FAQ, which even further helps drive sales.

> Do I need Morrowind to use OpenMW?

> Yes, if you wish to play Morrowind and its expansions. You must legally own Morrowind before you can use OpenMW to play Morrowind. OpenMW is a game engine recreation and only replaces the program. OpenMW does not come with any “content” or “asset” – namely the art, game data, and other copyrighted material that you need to play the game as designed by Bethesda Softworks. You have to provide this content yourself by installing Morrowind and then configuring OpenMW to use the existing installation.

Open sourcing a game engine does not mean that you have to make the game free.

Re: Ask HN: Why do games companies not release source code for old games?

#39

Post by jayd16 »

msl09 wrote: post #37
jayd16 wrote: post #20

There's no incentive to do so. It takes time and money to ensure you're not releasing proprietary code you don't own. It likely stops you from ever re-releasing it, even if that's very unlikely.

I understand that binary libraries can be owned by a different company. But if you strip all that could the resulting code still be infringing the copy rights of third parties? I never worked at a company where someone else's source was integrated to our tree so I can't tell.

For game engines it's actually fairly common to have source access but not a redistribution license.

Re: Ask HN: Why do games companies not release source code for old games?

#40

Post by gradascent »

On a similar note, I really hope that the AI companies that don't make it, but have invested a lot in curating and annotating high quality datasets, would release them to the public. Autonomous car and robotics companies in particular since that kind of data doesn't exist on the internet as abundantly as, say, natural language text.
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