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Are there any examples of an "abandoned" game's fans successfully getting the game to be open-sourced? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by turtle@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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.

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[–] jrubal1462@mander.xyz 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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I learned about this, probably 15 years ago, and I never played, so a lot of this might be outdated or just plain wrong.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

[–] turtle@lemm.ee 1 points 4 days ago

That's cool, thank you for telling the background!