Are there any examples of an "abandoned" game's fans successfully getting the game to be open-sourced?

[jrubal1462@mander.xyz]

As I understand it, something like that happened with the game, Alliance. It was a RTS where humans had to control all the units that the commander build and ordered around.

I learned about this, probably 15 years ago, and I never played, so a lot of this might be outdated or just plain wrong.

I think Microsoft published the game, and eventually abandoned it. It still had a thriving mod community but they were struggling due to the lack of source code and support. Apparently, years after working on the game, one of the designers happened across an Internet forum talking about the struggles they were having. The designer then went back to his bosses and said, "We abandoned this years ago, can I just give them the source code?" I guess they did and since then the mod started making HUGE fundamental changes to the game.

[turtle@lemm.ee]

Thanks again!

[turtle@lemm.ee]

No problem, thanks!

[turtle@lemm.ee]

That's cool, thank you for telling the background!

[uxellodunum@lemmy.ml]

I'm also on Linux.
Ensure you have docker and docker-compose installed.
IIRC you also need the windows server files# .
I'll get back to you with my server compose file.

[jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.works]

Sorry - I wasn't clear. I can't seem to join any servers. Some comments mention changing the default server to "hex41.de" so I changed that but I can't connect.

Maybe it's since been taken down or something.

[uxellodunum@lemmy.ml]

Ah I see. Did you change the lobby URL in the config file? There's a config file with a lobby URL, you need to change it to point to the correct lobby where servers will show. Or is that what you with the changing the default server?

[Guest]

Yes. Well, the source code was actually supposed to be released under the BSD-3 license even back in 2016, after the game was abandoned in its commercial form in late 2014. But the plans fell through and when the official community site (with discussion forums, wiki as well as sharing levels for the game) then shut down in 2018 without a word from the original author, it was assumed that the open source release would never happen anymore.

I had played the game when it originally released in 2013 (and I had also played the prequel from 2011), so my time with the game goes back for a long time. When I came back to the game after a year or two of inactivity in late 2019 I discovered the sorry state that the game was in, and decided to begin reverse engineering the game to create a new unofficial community site for it (I have a longer blog post that goes over it in some more detail, up to and including after the source release). During this time, the original author was more or less impossible to get into contact with, but one day in August of 2022 he just stumbled into the unofficial Discord server we had for the game and got to see the stuff I had done. He was very happy to see what I had accomplished to try to revive the game on my own, and after he had reintroduced himself to what remained of the community and we had talked for a while, the topic of releasing the source code was brought up. Which of course he was very enthusiastic about.

In the end I didn't end up actually being the one who published the source code to the Internet and such, but I was definitively the one who got the ball rolling again and at least I got to be the first one to build it natively for Linux, among other things. And when the original author had to leave again for personal reasons I was given the maintainer hat in his absence to keep the open source project running in the hands of the community. Apart from the fact that there did not end up being a lot of momentum for the development of the game afterwards (whether it be due to the release happening so many years late that people moved on, the unfortunate state that the game's source code ended up being in, or personal incompetence on my part), Principia has probably been among the best success stories of an abandoned commercial game in modern times being open sourced and officially picked up by the community, and it also likely had the best circumstances to make it happen.

[ephera@lemmy.ml]

Neat, thanks for the response!

I think, we have to tag @[email protected] , so they see it.

[turtle@lemm.ee]

Awesome, thank you @[email protected] for those details and @[email protected] for the tag!