Are there any examples of an "abandoned" game's fans successfully getting the game to be open-sourced?
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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.
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oh wow, uh, my IP is blocked from accessing that website
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Must be in the UK
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Yeah, but... why?
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Does the Unity release of Daggerfall count?
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Not at all. The reverse engineering they had to do is insane
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Legal reasons, Jagex being a UK company
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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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Hawken was recently brought back from the dead by a few insanely dedicated fans.
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holy shit, very cool to learn about re-volt! i loved playing that game with my brother on n64
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Makes sense, thanks.
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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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Good to know, thanks!
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Awesome achievement, thanks for telling the story!
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What's the story with that one? Was the original game open-sourced, or is it a rewrite?
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Cool, thank you!
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Thanks! What did they do?
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Mechromancy, I guess. I genuinely don't really know.
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No worries, I'll check it out, thanks!
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Winamp dumping a bunch or proprietary information on GitHub is a good example of this.
