| ▲ | F3nd0 3 hours ago |
| > That... basically kills the entire gaming industry.
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> Am I missing something serious here or is this really trying to advocate for that. What you might be missing is that the author advocates for free software (which is framed differently from open source), while games typically aren’t pure software, but rely very heavily on art assets. The movement for free software traditionally draws a distinction between software and art. This means that only the software part of each game would need to be distributable, not the entire game. |
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| ▲ | saghm 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| In that vein, the other day this got posted to HN: https://twilitrealm.dev/ It uses an independent reimplementation of the code of a Zelda game from the GameCube and combines them with the assets from the actual game to make native binaries for various platforms, which blows my mind a bit but demonstrates the power of this sort of split abstraction. |
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| ▲ | F3nd0 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes! And there are many other re-implementation projects, like OpenMW, OpenGothic, fheroes2, and others, which allow you to play the games if you can provide the original assets. Largely for older games, but the point stands. https://openmw.org/ https://github.com/Try/OpenGothic https://ihhub.github.io/fheroes2/ | | |
| ▲ | saghm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | OpenMW has been on my list to try out for a while now, I should have thought of that one. I hadn't heard of OpenGothic, but I also only recently started learning about that game at all with the remake coming out soon, so I might need to add that to my list as well! This makes me think, is there one of those "awesome" lists for open game reimplementations? If not, someone should make one... (edit: Thanks for the multiple great replies on this! Now I have even more stuff to go through to add to my lists, and I love having that problem) | | | |
| ▲ | dpoloncsak 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Adding on to this but I'm not sure if it's 1:1 what you're talking about. PokeMMO is a online Pokemon Fangame that combines the first 5 generations of games. From what I gather, this is possible because it is up to the user to provide the ROMs, so litigious Nintendo cannot say they are re-distributing copyrighted material | | |
| ▲ | saghm 37 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Does it only use the assets from the original games, or also the scripting? If the former, then I'd say it's basically the same concept that I'm talking about, but with making a new game using the existing assets rather than reimplementing an existing one. If it uses the scripting as well and then provides some extra stuff to merge them and put it online, I'd say it's a slightly different (but still extremely cool!) thing. |
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| ▲ | zuzululu 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | WTF! That is impressive there is OSS Gothic 2 I wonder if its legal, how is it MIT | | |
| ▲ | saghm 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Presumably from the same methodology they laid out in the parent comment: clean-room reimplementation of the code is fair game, and you have to bring-your-own-assets (ostensibly from a legal copy of the original game, but however you do it is your own choice, not anything the people providing the free code need to be concerned with). |
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| ▲ | doctorpangloss 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | what power, exactly? that nintendo doesn't care about these guys for some idiosyncratic reason? | | |
| ▲ | saghm 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The power to have a game natively on platforms it was never implemented on before but look identical to the original. To me, that's honestly cooler and more desirable than emulation; the fact that it's also more defensible from an IP standpoint is just a nice bonus. I also wouldn't say that "respecting the limits of IP law" is particularly idiosyncratic either; you can make the case that IP owners like Nintendo often overreach due to the inherent advantage of being a large company with a lot more resources than a smaller open source project, but I don't really see it as worthwhile to call them out for not doing that in some cases. | |
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| ▲ | ZeWaka 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Dwarf Fortress is a modern example of that paradigm. |
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| ▲ | dangus an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This is largely how open source game engines like OpenMW or OpenTTD work: the game engine is reverse engineered, and the art is something the end user provides by downloading/owning a legitimate retail copy. And that’s really great, but this model is ultimately not realistic for most game developers. It’s not like productivity software where the code of the product isn’t the majority of the value being delivered. Gitlab is happy to give away their source code because a bunch of enterprise integrations, support, cloud hosting, and features are paywalled. Game developers really just can’t do this model. If the game is open source it’s going to be far too easy to pirate the game. The economics of single player games largely revolve around the strength of sales in the first month or two. This model works for games on GOG because they tend to be priced so low that most users are okay with paying for convenience. Many of the games in that catalog are essentially back catalog that have been paid off for years and whose sales are quite insignificant to the publisher. For a AAA game where it needs to sell millions of copies at a high price to break even on its huge production budget, game companies can’t risk a high piracy rate. Just look at GTA 6, a game with a production budget of multiple Avatar films. |
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| ▲ | MYEUHD 20 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Games will get pirated regardless whether they're on GOG or not. > This model works for games on GOG because they tend to be priced so low that most users are okay with paying for convenience. Many of the games in that catalog are essentially back catalog that have been paid off for years and whose sales are quite insignificant to the publisher. This is not always the case. For example this game will be available on GOG on day 1. In fact you can pre-order it now: https://www.gog.com/en/game/gothic_1_remake As another example, this game was released on GOG 5 months after the Steam release: https://www.gog.com/en/game/clair_obscur_expedition_33 Likewise, Cyberpunk 2077 was released on GOG 4 months after the Steam release. And IIRC the game's revenue didn't cover its costs until ~2 years later. All three of the examples I gave are $50 or more. |
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