As platforms evolve, old games become unplayable. Open sourcing them will help us preserve them for future generations.

A lot of old games have become unplayable on modern hardware and operating systems. I wrote an article about how making games open source will keep them playable far into the future.

I also discuss how making games open source could be beneficial to developers and companies.

Feedback and constructive criticism are most welcome, and in keeping with the open source spirit, I will give you credit if I make any edits based on your feedback.

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
      21·
      12 days ago

      I think it’d be good to release them under a timebomb license: closed source for 5 years, let the dev make money, after which they have to release their source under a permissive license.

      • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
        3·
        12 days ago

        Eh, that would disincentivize long-term updates.

        Instead, 5 or 10 years of inactivity should be more than enough leeway.

        • Kelly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          5 hours ago

          On the other hand if the code from the 5 year old release was open source but the updates from today was still closed source for another 5 years that would encourage continual improvement addition content to differentiate from the community releases.

          • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
            1·
            2 hours ago

            It wouldn’t be limited to community releases, though. Other companies could poach the source code for themselves, and I doubt that’s something easy to regulate.

    • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
      13·
      12 days ago

      Similar way is how I ended up finding out about Mindustry. Found it on F-Droid and liked it enough to buy it on Steam when I found out it’s available there. Definitely a good idea if done right.

    • SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works
      11·
      12 days ago

      They could potentially release source only with no art assets. Then you wouldn’t be able to compile the game without either owning the game or pirating the assets elsewhere. But it would allow community members to update the game when it breaks or to add new features. Similar to the Mario 64 decompile.

      While all this would be great for consumers it would probably take legislation to get publishers on board with something like this. Publishers have a financial incentive to let the games languish then force you to pay to get a “remastered” version.

    • Ferk@lemmy.ml
      7·
      12 days ago

      I have purchased every single open source game that I’ve seen listed on steam as paid. Examples:

      For more FOSS games on steam, there’s a decent list collected on this curator (also pointing which ones are only partially open): https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38475471-Libre-Open-Source-Games/?appid=1769170