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Let’s make games open source, so future generations can enjoy them
(jairajdevadiga.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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What do you guys think about releasing them on github for free but in official stores as paid?
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.
Eh, that would disincentivize long-term updates.
Instead, 5 or 10 years of inactivity should be more than enough leeway.
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.
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.
True, "community" might not be the right term.
But nonetheless if the OG developer structures their license so that each version becomes open source after 5 years then people publishing that as is or creating forks will always be a few steps behind the official release.
Of course if the title has any kind of community support that crowd sourced effort has the potential to outshine the OG developer, its important they time their license to give themselves a head start.
I think Friday Night Funkin' will turn into a cautionary tale here, by releasing their game with much hype and open sourcing their code the first 7 weeks in 2020-21 they allowed community to really flourish. The player community has created content and then content that builds on and responds to that content (both narratively and mechanically) for several cycles now. Much of this content is now viewed as core to the FnF experience by players but much of it is also now built around other people's IP (video games, TV shows, music, etc)
At the same time The Funkin' Crew has been quietly working on Friday Night Funkin': The Full Ass Game but I suspect that as a commercial game bound by the resources of single dev team and the rule of law they will be hard pressed to compete with the community they spawned.
While this is a win for remix culture it might not turn out as being the most prudent business decision. On the other hand they pulled off a two million dollar kickstarter so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯