Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org

Re:Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org by concordDance on Saturday July 01, 2023 @07:39AM (#36549042)

What should really happen is a law that video games get declared public domain and have their source code released after 10 years. All assets and dependencies would get automatically released under a license allowing for their use in that game and derivatives of it.

As it is, the source is mostly just lost to time, making humanity poorer.

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Re:Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org by flohofwoe on Saturday July 01, 2023 @10:04AM (#36550237)

There's a lot of games that have a shelf life of more than a decade. Maybe make that "10 years after the game is no longer sold".

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Re:Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org by Vespasian on Saturday July 01, 2023 @10:28AM (#36550482)

That (maybe) would have worked in the olden days of physical disks or catridges. Today it is trivial to keep the game on steam with zero sales (or almost zero).

If lawmakers wanted to pass a law that actually made this happen they needed to stipulate a cut off date (and potential compensation) as well as rigid rules about what one can do with the released code.

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Re:Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org by account42 on Monday July 03, 2023 @10:40AM (#36573567)

> and potential compensation

Why would there be a need for compensation. Copyright is only granted in the first place so that more things will (eventually) enter the commons. Rolling back the perversion that is the current copyright terms doesn't need anything to balance it out since the current sitation is already so unbalanced in the other direction.

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Re:Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org by concordDance on Saturday July 01, 2023 @06:32PM (#36556030)

Very few and they still make 90+% of sales before then. A price worth paying

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Re:Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org by flohofwoe on Saturday July 01, 2023 @06:55PM (#36556188)

That dynamic has changed a lot with multiplayer games which are in continuous development. For instance DayZ just hit record player numbers after nearly a decade:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/11nlu70/recently_dayz...

But even if that's an outlier, online games can have a surprisingly long tail where the game remains profitable even if the player count doesn't grow anymore (as long as the developer supports the game at least).

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Re:Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org by account42 on Monday July 03, 2023 @10:38AM (#36573539)

Practically only games that are continuously updated have longer shelf lifes. In that case only the original version would have to be opened after 10 years and later modifications would have to wait ten years after their release.

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Re:Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org by nerdix on Saturday July 01, 2023 @10:07AM (#36550279)

Would be nice but remastering 10+ year old games is very profitable these days so I'd imagine that the industry would lobby very hard against it.

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Re:Someone dropped the source code for Far Cry 1 on archive.org by scheeseman486 on Saturday July 01, 2023 @11:14PM (#36557879)

Doom, Quake and System Shock all have high profile remasters in spite of their source releases. Hell, one could argue they had high profile remasters because the source ports kept the game and communities alive.

Meanwhile, look at Unreal. Not even sold anymore.

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