|
| ▲ | dleslie 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Video Game asset and source control retention was _terrible_. Hell, it's still terrible. Prior to ~2010 we were simply deleting source code and assets for finished projects; either because they weren't owned by the developer due to a publishing deal, or because the developers didn't want to reuse their garbage code. Same follows for assets, often they were owned by the publisher and not the developer, but if the developer did happen to own them they'd rarely see reuse in future projects. And publishers didn't catch on to the value of data retention until remakes started to make serious money. |
| |
| ▲ | ryandrake 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Wild culture! At almost[1] every (non game) software company I've ever worked, the source code was sacrosanct. If nothing else in the company was backed up, controlled, audited, and kept precious, at least the source code was. The idea of just casually deleting stuff because you think you're done sounds crazy to me as a software practitioner. I still have backed up copies of the full source code of personal projects that I wrote 25 years ago. These will probably never be deleted until I'm dead. 1: One company I worked for didn't have a clue about managing their source code, and didn't even use source control. They were a hardware manufacturer that just didn't understand or care about software at all. Not what I'd think of when I think a professional game developer. | | | |
| ▲ | wolpoli 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There were a few patches to RA2 through, so the code clearly exists for a bit of time post completion. | | |
| ▲ | cogman10 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | 6 total and they spanned from 2000 to 2001. Just 1 year. That was fairly typical at the time. It wasn't uncommon for a game publisher to patch their games, it was uncommon for that patching happen too far from the initial release. After all, they wanted their game devs working on something other than the old release. The patches were strictly just a goodwill thing to make sure the game kept selling. |
| |
| ▲ | Rover222 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Makes sense I guess, but still seems absurd. |
|
|
| ▲ | ryanmcbride 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The more you look around the more commonly you'll start seeing things like this. The RS3 OSRS split itself happened because Jagex recovered their lost source code and was suddenly able to do it. |
| |
| ▲ | cc-d an hour ago | parent [-] | | Runescape was made to be botted to begin with as a bink to gold selling chads. Whole thing was compromised since day 1, many a mouth was fed off of based anglo chad's fantasy game. We needed another money source. "recovered" the source code this was the mob's code to begin with britboys |
|
|
| ▲ | Telaneo 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The same happened with Silent Hill 2 and 3.[1] The industry's treatment of its works was pretty horrible back in the day. Not even 25 years earlier, developers had to fight to be credited in games. Lessons take a while to learn, apparently. [1] https://gamingbolt.com/konami-lost-the-source-code-for-silen... |
|
| ▲ | deaddodo 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nobody said every copy was lost, they said the copies in whatever repository Westwood handed over to EA were lost. There might still be a copy on one of the individuals involved in development's machines/backups/etc. |
|
| ▲ | ErroneousBosh 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > How the hell could they LOSE the source code to that game? All copies of it. I wrote a streaming video platform in the very early 2000s. It worked great, if you were on ISDN, or at my house with a whopping 256kbps cable modem! All lovingly hand-crafted in PHP3 with a Postgres backend. Lots of I want to say ffmpeg but it might have been shelling out to mencoder back then. Gone. Along with probably a couple of hundred hours of footage both unedited and raw camera captures, of various training videos for the oil industry, Scottish Women's Football League matches - they were very forward-thinking and because no TV channel would show their games they wanted to post the match highlights on their website, so RealPlayer to the rescue I guess. All gone. I didn't own the servers, the company I worked for did. When the company went tits, they wanted to make sure that none of "their IP" was leaving the organisation, so I wiped stuff off my personal machines and handed over all the camera and master tapes. The servers got wiped for sale and the tapes went in a skip. They'd paid a fucking fortune for all of that, but ultimately when they decided they'd had enough of that venture the hardware went for scrap prices and the soft assets were wiped, not really worth anything. Who would want to post on a website where you could upload and share videos, upvote or downvote them, comment on them, and tell all your friends? It's all gone now. I wish I'd just stolen it. |
| |
|
| ▲ | mtillman 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Panzer Dragoon Saga is also lost. Probably a lot of games like that. |
|
| ▲ | jdmoreira 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hope someone somewhere still has the source for MicroProse’s Shandalar. |
| |
|
| ▲ | BergAndCo 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It was an era where Team Foundation Server was just oops corrupting entire codebases |
|
| ▲ | jajuuka 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Part of it I imagine is because Westwood made the game and then got bought up and shutdown under EA. Asset tracking would be a mess. Other part of it is most studios didn't imagine a use for old games in the future. So they weren't archived properly. World of Warcraft original source code was mostly lost and that game sold incredibly well and the company stayed in business. More modern studios are thinking more about remasters, remakes and archiving their work now so it's mostly a problem with older titles. |
|
| ▲ | caycep 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| companies shut down and lose stuff I guess. Icewind Dale 2 another example |
