Are there any examples of an "abandoned" game's fans successfully getting the game to be open-sourced?
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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!"
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.
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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.
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
[email protected] was developed as a commercial title a few years back. I believe, @[email protected] contacted the devs to get it open-sourced.
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Warzone 2100 is an RTS that fans petitioned a company to release as FLOSS, after support had ended.
And it's fun. I still play it when I have time.
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
While not open source, OldUnreal has taken over Unreal and Unreal Tournament with access to the source code and they release patches. The OldUnreal team has an agreement with Epic to do this.
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While not open source, OldUnreal has taken over Unreal and Unreal Tournament with access to the source code and they release patches. The OldUnreal team has an agreement with Epic to do this.
That's awesome. I had no idea.
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
Not strictly the same, but one of the most amazing feats to me in this topic was done by the Sacred community over at DarkMatters.
Apoligies for the wall of text, but I consider it worth a read.
Sacred 2 in particular never had its server code open sourced, leaked, or anything of the like as the studio went bankrupt before anything could happen, this was around 2010.
Over the course of a decade a few volunteer devs would pick up a project where using tools like wireshark etc they'd essentially sniff traffic sent by a client attempting connection to a server that didn't exist, and using this, devs would literally try to GUESS what a server would respond, and what a client expected, essentially trying to build out the backend infrastructure from SCRATCH.
Fast forward to 2020 or so and progress was still being made, not only that but things were beginning to actually take shape.
In 2021 (IIRC) one dev in particular had the general frame of a working server and continued to work on it. Fast-forward and since 2022-23, you're able to run both a LOBBY for multiple servers and an actual GAME SERVER yourself, self-hosted and code is open.I've ran a couple servers using docker since, where I played with friends, and being able to replay that childhood game, with friends, one I thought I'd never be able to share the experience for, is a dream come true.
Another neat thing is that it was reverse-engineered in windows, but the docker containers literally run WINE to translate windows calls to Linux and it just works.
Knowing I'm able to in 2,5,10,30 years pick this up, and not only that, but replay with friends means this work of art has a great chance at preservation.
If you're into power metal, there's a band called Blind Guardian, they not only did they the main theme for the game, but the band's members have an entire quest-line in-game that culminates with an in-game concert. Again, a work of art worth preserving, and now, it can be shared.
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Does rewriting the game count? https://2009scape.org/
oh wow, uh, my IP is blocked from accessing that website
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oh wow, uh, my IP is blocked from accessing that website
Must be in the UK
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Must be in the UK
Yeah, but... why?
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
Does the Unity release of Daggerfall count?
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Does the Unity release of Daggerfall count?
Not at all. The reverse engineering they had to do is insane
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Yeah, but... why?
Legal reasons, Jagex being a UK company
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
Club Penguin Rewritten, Toontown Rewritten, and The Legend of Pirates Online (based on Pirates of the Caribbean Online) are resurrected versions of games shut down by Disney. The former was
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
Hawken was recently brought back from the dead by a few insanely dedicated fans.
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One that I'm aware of is Re-Volt. The source code for both the base game and some addons can be found here.
There was another one that I remember using years ago but I can't find it anymore. It was for another racing game called 4x4 Evo. There is the 4x4 Evolution Revival project but it's not the one I used and there doesn't seem to be any source code available.
holy shit, very cool to learn about re-volt! i loved playing that game with my brother on n64
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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.
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[email protected] was developed as a commercial title a few years back. I believe, @[email protected] 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.
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While not open source, OldUnreal has taken over Unreal and Unreal Tournament with access to the source code and they release patches. The OldUnreal team has an agreement with Epic to do this.
Good to know, thanks!
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Not strictly the same, but one of the most amazing feats to me in this topic was done by the Sacred community over at DarkMatters.
Apoligies for the wall of text, but I consider it worth a read.
Sacred 2 in particular never had its server code open sourced, leaked, or anything of the like as the studio went bankrupt before anything could happen, this was around 2010.
Over the course of a decade a few volunteer devs would pick up a project where using tools like wireshark etc they'd essentially sniff traffic sent by a client attempting connection to a server that didn't exist, and using this, devs would literally try to GUESS what a server would respond, and what a client expected, essentially trying to build out the backend infrastructure from SCRATCH.
Fast forward to 2020 or so and progress was still being made, not only that but things were beginning to actually take shape.
In 2021 (IIRC) one dev in particular had the general frame of a working server and continued to work on it. Fast-forward and since 2022-23, you're able to run both a LOBBY for multiple servers and an actual GAME SERVER yourself, self-hosted and code is open.I've ran a couple servers using docker since, where I played with friends, and being able to replay that childhood game, with friends, one I thought I'd never be able to share the experience for, is a dream come true.
Another neat thing is that it was reverse-engineered in windows, but the docker containers literally run WINE to translate windows calls to Linux and it just works.
Knowing I'm able to in 2,5,10,30 years pick this up, and not only that, but replay with friends means this work of art has a great chance at preservation.
If you're into power metal, there's a band called Blind Guardian, they not only did they the main theme for the game, but the band's members have an entire quest-line in-game that culminates with an in-game concert. Again, a work of art worth preserving, and now, it can be shared.
Awesome achievement, thanks for telling the story!
