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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?

#71

Post by account42 »

ghaff wrote: post #14
fragmede wrote: post #4

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…

> In a lot of cases it would involve tossing an incomplete bunch of code over the wall with few instructions about actually using it. Which is probably not what the recipients had in mind.

The "recipients" don't mind this at all. Many source ports built from gutted releases speak to that.

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

#72

Post by ThatPlayer »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #64
ibobev wrote: post #63

ID Software released the source code of their classic games up to "Doom 3: BFG Edition"[1] but it is unlikely that they will release the code for any of their newer games. I think that the reason is using a closed-source middleware owned by other companies in their newer titles. Any modern AAA game even with its own engine uses one or more third-party middleware which hinders its release as an open source. [1] https:…

What is the "middleware" in context of game development?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine#Game_middleware

Examples range from Bink Video for video, GGPO for rollback netcode, Havok for physics, SpeedTree for trees. Bunch of those splash screens at the beginning of the game: I don't even know what Criware makes, but they seem to be popular for Japanese developers, and I know the name from that.

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

#73

Post by Steve44 »

One aspect I've not seen mentioned is there may well be things such as comments & labels in the source which haven't aged well.

Not only profanities, but they could be littered with labels indicating different attitudes to race, gender, religion, politics etc etc which would be unpalatable now. In the early days with more solo and isolated developers I'd expect there is quite a scope for this to have happened.

The company releasing it and also the author could well come in for a hard time. There have been a few high profile instances where a Tweet/BBS post from 10-20 years ago has come back to haunt people. Sometimes it's best playing it safe and keeping it locked away, if it still even exists.

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

#74

Post by entreunemployed »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #9

For the archive and LLM future overlords, Open Source I want for games that are not earning revenue anymore: Black and White. Creatures. That's all thank you.

Fun fact: the Google DeepMind CEO, Dennis Hassabis, was also lead AI programmer on Black & White

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

#75

Post by ghusto »

trashface wrote: post #43

It usually eventually gets ownership transferred to some big company and they just stuff the IP in a drawer and forget about it. I was at a game company that got acquired, there were various game IPs that were part of that. The acquirer was interested in only a few of them, but they would get all as part of the deal. I inquired as to whether they would be interested in letting me buy one of the IPs that they didn't c…

In a way, I wish people would just leak the source for things like this by posting it anonymously as a torrent, for example. It's the ethically correct thing to do in a broken system.

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

#76

Post by philomath_mn »

KronisLV wrote: post #67
ammo1662 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so if you want to open source a legacy game of your company, you will need additional efforts to remove those game assets. So you can make sure that you do not have any legal troubles. I think that's the reason why they do not want to open source their old games.

> I think that's the reason why they do not want to open source their old games. In other words, either their finances are too tight to spare the effort, or they simply don't care about their games as works of artistic merit that might need to be preserved or even improved across generations of devices and operating systems, but rather just as products to earn money off of and then abandon.

Game studios are businesses, not charities. Why should they dedicate resources to making a very small group of people happy?

And yes, the games are products: they cost money to make and they make money when they are sold.

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

#77

Post by philomath_mn »

nitwit005 wrote: post #42

Given a choice between money or control, expect executives to pick control. It's a relatively small portion of game studios that are welcoming of mods. Often that is a legacy of the company being small and developer led.

Where is the money in this situation? Very unlikely this will have any impact on sales moving forward.

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

#79

Post by trashface »

ghusto wrote: post #75
trashface wrote: post #43

It usually eventually gets ownership transferred to some big company and they just stuff the IP in a drawer and forget about it. I was at a game company that got acquired, there were various game IPs that were part of that. The acquirer was interested in only a few of them, but they would get all as part of the deal. I inquired as to whether they would be interested in letting me buy one of the IPs that they didn't c…

In a way, I wish people would just leak the source for things like this by posting it anonymously as a torrent, for example. It's the ethically correct thing to do in a broken system.

I suspect the reason we don't see more of that is because most game code is very distinctive if not outright unique. For companies inclined to retaliate legally, its probably pretty easy to come up with a plausible set of people who might have had access to it.

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

#80

Post by filchermcurr »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #9

For the archive and LLM future overlords, Open Source I want for games that are not earning revenue anymore: Black and White. Creatures. That's all thank you.

Creatures like Norn Creatures? It actually is still earning revenue. All of the games were recently released on Steam with some CAOS updates. There are also some recent community patches to the engine to fix some longstanding bugs. The community has also developed a replacement for the Docking Station warp. (The community is pretty active for a 30 something year old game series!)
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