Should video games be open source?

Depends on the project.
A game can be a lot of things.
If we break it up into parts, it can be an engine, a set of rules, some graphics, and some scenarios where you play within.

A single player game will have a lot of different scenarios.
Another game might focus more on the graphics.
Some game might focus completely on the mechanic.

From an idealistic standpoint, anything that can be copied an infinite amount of time for free, should be free, but I can see why you want to keep people employed.
But I also think people should get something for their money.
Say a game has reached its potential, everyone who will ever buy it have done so.
At this time, game developers usually stop developing the system and starts the next project.
When this happens, why not open source it?
Hell, you could setup a server that takes money each time someone wants to download the source code.
Flaws in the physics engine or the network stack or just improvements in the AI is good reasons to make it open source, but I doubt it will take off because of being open source.
A game like 0AD is free software but it doesn't mean it has the best AI or the best mechanics, maps etc. I wouldn't even say it is on par with AOE3 even though that came out 13 years ago.
I would rather see good games (that I need to pay for) available on all platforms than see mediocre open source games that doesn't see play by other people

Yes, they should be open source but commercialized.

Get a fucking life pls.

Yes, or at least the engines should be once they become outdated. It sucks to see old games struggling to run on new hardware due to compatibility issues or not being able to be played on some newer hardware due to processor differences (such as the various handheld consoles/UMPCs/modern smartphones). id Software really had the right idea releasing their old game engines after they developed new ones, since it immortalized their games and is one of the contributing factors to Doom's continuing popularity (considering them GPLing the engine allowed people to port it to every device with a screen and some way of accepting input from a user). Too bad Zun lost the source for the old PC98 Touhou games, as those could really benefit from a GPLed engine since the hardware they can't run on modern hardware without an emulator.

There is no valid reason for anything to be closed-source.

Except it doesn't when you have systemd which is an unaudited turd that's never going to be audited because it's way too big

There's no valid reason for anything to exist.

Because you're too stupid to make anything yourself

Game engines should be open source, assets can be considered as intelectual property so the distribution of those is up to the devs.
Sadly the current state of gayming is one jewish trick after another so we won't see that happen.

this, though it gets blurred because shaders and scripts are code that define the uniqueness of the game, and could be made malicious

wasnt there a game recently that shipped with a cryptominer in it?

what if you ran a game that had spyware in it?
"just a simple timewaster"

definitely this
and not just videogames, all companies should publish all their blueprints if they go bankrupt
I'd love blueprints for my one of a kind table if you're not making them anymore

I have one shirt that fits better than all shirts ive seen in shops, I'm tempted to reverse engineer it so I can make more of them somehow

No. Someone or a large team of people went through the painstaking process of designing the game engine, the assets, etc. Why should anyone have free access to that stuff? Want to make mods and stuff like that? Fine, pay a small fee (think like $50) and we'll give you the tools and info needed to use the engine and assets properly. Don't like it? Go use Unity.

>that's never going to be audited because it's way too big
Wut? Systemd only consists of 402K lines of code:
openhub.net/p/systemd

For comparison, the Linux kernel consists of 16.8 Million lines of code:
openhub.net/p/linux

Modern browsers like Firefox and Chromium consist of ~18 million (no link for Firefox since the count is about 2x what it should be right now):
openhub.net/p/chrome

Even Emacs contains 1.64 million lines of code and Vim contains 582K:
openhub.net/p/emacs
openhub.net/p/vim

If you're really concerned about 402K lines of code being unauditable, I'd love to know what OS and software you use these days.

No, video games are for children and children are too stupid to give a shit about source code.

And as we all know, Art should never be shared and modify in any ways.
An Hero yourselves.

Isn't UT4 open source, how is that working out?

agree with this, but maybe after 10 years or if the company goes bankrupt, the source code should be released so it lives on

especially ONLINE SERVERS
all online game servers should release source code when decommissioned, so communities can continue hosting

unity should be open source though

That's funny considering most gamers are adults.

>most gamers are manchildren

FTFY

>all online game servers should release source code when decommissioned, so communities can continue hosting

Fucking this. There are a few games I'd like to play but can't because their servers are gone.

Stallman does think so and he's the most autistic person when it comes to ethical software development.

However, using DRM to "protect" these games would be absolutely unethical.

Doesn't.

Fuck.

yeah. how else can we trust our consoles aren't misappropriatec for mining?

Open source is usually there for protection of the users. It might very well be that they depend on the software to do their job. Their reliance can easily be catastrophic if the company decides to fight their use.

For videogames the closest to that would be people who play videogames for others to watch.

Security is an aspect of it. But broadly we don't have infringement there. Games don't usually touch things other than their own process space and game files.

i don't believe there's any ethical basis for intellectual "property," so yes

>but muh creators
i don't care about your consumerist freakshow

Get the fuck off of Cred Forums please.

Of course there is: God.
And god gave mankind this world for free, restricting usage of it's resources due to greed is against god.

...

I think games should have source code released after a certain number of years, like with Doom. Otherwise its up to the dev.

No. Guarantee bigger companies would take a not well known game made by a smaller group, slap their own art on it and promote it to shit. They already do that in the mobile market and this would just make it easier.

For online games, especially no. That should be obvious.

>Should video games be open source?
Some are open source

See anuto TD

3.5 years of development and they haven't done shit.

Even stallman agrees that it's okay for a video game to have proprietary art/assets as long as the software itself is libre

>tfw mt framework and it's successors will never be open source

nothing japan does will be open source
stubborn and backwards when it comes to computers

wrong

gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html

>Nonfree game programs are unethical because they deny freedom to their users. If you want freedom, one requisite for it is not having or running nonfree programs on your computer.

Video games should be free (libre) software. If you won't allow shitty proprietary software companies to attack your freedom at work in a professional setting, they why let them do it at home just so you can pretend to shoot people in trash games like pubg or whatever the latest call of duty is? I personally won't tolerate this and I actually would rather play Tuxkart than whatever stupid shit they're selling on tv these days.

It would be nice if there were some kind of royalties in that situation like there is in the music industry

Xonotic, lads

>videogames = art

It's not absolutely necessary, but it would be nice.

I mean, I'd appreciate it if they would eventually. Like, I know that unloved games like Battlezone (the 1998 one) basically require their source code to be released eventually if they aren't getting enough love. Luckily one of the original devs came back to give it some love for modern users, but not all unpopular games get the same chance.
Didn't the Homeworld remaster have a problem where the original source code was lost? In any case there are other such cases where a game gets to unplayable levels from age or where the source code can't be found anymore. More popular games are up for contention because they're still popular years later. Like Starcraft? Among others.

Mostly yes. Assets take the most man hours of game development and they're all art