And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?

Edit: I’m more looking for instances of the actual original game being open-sourced through fan efforts or outright purchase, like how Blender was originally open-sourced as a result of a crowdfunding campaign. The open-source rewrites of games are awesome, but I don’t have the skills to build a relatively elaborate game on my own. It’s also not a popular game, more niche, really, so I’m just wondering what are the possibilities.

  • jrubal1462@mander.xyz
    0·
    6 days ago

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    I learned about this, probably 15 years ago, and I never played, so a lot of this might be outdated or just plain wrong.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

  • TurboWafflz@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 days ago

    The developer of Terraria promised to open source the canceled sequel if a petition could get enough signatures but then it did and he didn’t release the code

    • simple@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      8 days ago

      Plenty of devs think it’s easier than it is. A ton of games are built on proprietary tools, and then you get into legal hot water on whether you can even give away things like the soundtrack or assets you bought like stock sound effects.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if they looked at it after the petition and thought “wait, I actually can’t open source this”

    • turtle [he/him]@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      Cool, thank you for the reference! If I decide to pursue something like this, I will know someone to ask questions to.

  • hansolo@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    Not quite the same, but Total Annihilation and Beyond All Reason. It wasn’t abandonware, but more like after Total Annihilation hit success, rights were sold and resold and Atari as the final owner squandered every opportunity to do more with the engine and the franchise.

    The tactics were essentially receating a better engine with Spring, as the sort of newly open source upgraded version of the engine the same people built 10 years earlier. Taylor Swift did the same thing.

      • hansolo@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        8 days ago

        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.

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    8 days ago

    Ur-Quan Masters (aka. Star Control 2)

    But, it’s not really abandoned anymore. The developers are FINALLY making an official sequel!

    The 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!”

  • vortexal@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 days ago

    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.