Yup, they're sitting on millions of hours of work because of some nefarious business logic. Probably they determined that making old games available would negatively impact the sales of their new products, at least enough to be a problem. Whatever the reason, a shame.

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jasonjayr 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

This discussion from about 9 months ago explains it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42259040

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AndrewOMartin 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Id software open sourced the Doom engine, so anyone could play custom levels or enjoy community assets without directly benefiting Id. That's why Doom, and by extension Id software, disappeared so swiftly into obscurity.

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tokai 2 days ago | parent [-]

But Doom hasn't disappeared into obscurity at all.

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aruametello 2 days ago | parent [-]

it was sarcasm through counter example.

the parent comment mentioned:

> Yup, they're sitting on millions of hours of work because of some nefarious business logic. Probably they determined that making old games available would negatively impact the sales of their new products, at least enough to be a problem. Whatever the reason, a shame.

so he replied with "yeah, id software did that and people forgot about doom" exactly because that gave new life to the old game and the franchise probably has better health today due to the community involvement. (not a great analogy, but has a point)

	▲	tokai 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You hope it was "sarcasm through counter example".