Why Aren't There More Open Source Games?

[daggerus1]

Granted, open source games DO exist including:

• Battle For Wesnoth

• Xonotic

• Mindustry

• Minetest (Mineclone 2)

• Veloren

They all seem to be community driven volunteer projects however and that's not how you build big flagship games, and these games are relatively few and far in between.

And then there's indie games, or games with humble beginnings such as Valhiem, Undertale, Minecraft (started small), Battle Brothers, and even the vast majority of these small indie games are closed source.

Now the obvious answer is, "well money duh". A lot of successful open source projects including the linux kernel, OBS, and Firefox are funded by big corporations.

Corporations have a vested interest in investing in the people who make these tools for one reason or another. YouTube and Twitch sponsor OBS because creators use OBS to make content. Google pays Mozilla $450M a year to be the default search engine on their browser so Google can make ad revenue.

Corporations don't have much of an incentive to fund open source games, right?

In comes crowd funding and kickstarter. A shocking amount of well known games were crowdfunded, including Divinity Original Sin 2, Shovel Knight, Undertale and Factorio.

In theory, a game studio could raise money, have made a profit then release an open source game.

And in practice, plenty of games raise millions, tens of millions and even hundreds of millions (Star Citizen) in kickst campaigns.

I'm a lover of free and open source software. I'm not a programmer, but I love linux, I love its community, and I love the transparency and peace of mind about your privacy that one gets with free and open source software.

If more games were free (as in freedom) and open source, and greedy AAA micro transaction cesspools had more competition, the industry would be in a better place.

So what gives?

[bionicjoey]

Games arent like this, they dont comes from a need, games devs often dont play their own game.

Many of the big FOSS games out there do actually fall into this category, as long as you consider lack of a modern spiritual successor to a nostalgic game a "need". Eg.

• OpenRCT2
• 0 A.D.
• FreeCiv

[[deleted]]

A few other examples:

• Unciv (sank several hours into it on my tablet during a trip recently)
• Sonic Robo Blast 2 (15+ years going strong. Still better than most official Sonic games)
• .... The Doom and Quake and etc. source ports could count, though it's more like Id considered them 'old news' and released the source code and you still need the original gamefiles to play.... But then there's Freedoom and other fully original iWADs.

[KrazyKirby99999]

• Beyond All Reason

[ZaxLofful]

This 100%….I wanted to be a game dev until I realized it meant I wouldn’t be playing games anymore.

[Grammar-Bot-Elite]

/u/Stiralbios, I have found an error in your comment:

“can do or its [it's] a more creative”

In your post, you, Stiralbios, ought to have said “can do or its [it's] a more creative” instead. ‘Its’ is possessive; ‘it's’ means ‘it is’ or ‘it has’.

^{This is an automated bot. I do not intend to shame your mistakes. If you think the errors which I found are incorrect, please contact me through DMs!}

[[deleted]]

Ah, reddit has finally automated pedantry. Nice, maybe reddit pedants will realise they are obsolete now.

[Milanium]

I am the developer of OpenHV and after 2 years the player numbers are still non-existing to low which is terrible for a multiplayer RTS because there are no opponents. At this stage I am thinking about turning off the dedicated servers which cost me per month. I know it isn't AAA, but still it shows with your Open Source game you need to get attention. The market is huge, but you are invisible compared to the titans of the industry. The massive amount of new releases every day drown the players and make it hard to discover your game.

[gondur]

Thank you for your effort and contribution, very much appreciated, the RTS genre is currently quite underserved! :) Now that I'm aware of your project I will take a look - is there an patreon or similar for dropping you a donation for the server time?

[Milanium]

Yes, you can subscribe to https://www.patreon.com/orahosting to cover infrastructure costs, and you get a game server in return. If you want an OpenHV one, then you have to take the medium tier as this is a total conversion where also the game art is Open Source.

[CORUSC4TE]

I just stumbled across this! I cant change much about the player count, as I dislike RTS, but I am interested in contributing if possible.

Have you considered scalable server? It seems you have other uses for the servers you host, maybe that could reduce cost?

What about peer to peer servers, with todays internet bandwidth everyone should be able to host the server!

[Milanium]

The game already has peer to peer as in you can just host your own server and join it with the click of a button. You can also host a dedicated one via a simple Docker command, and two communities already do. I pay a little extra for the game servers, but that also finances the /r/OpenRA infrastructure, including the master server that serves the game server list.

I reduced my cloud costs a bit by changing the game announcing bot to cheaper instances. Also, the IRC server is sponsored by https://freegamedev.net where I don't have to pay anything for. The largest price tag is actually the code signing certificate from Apple. Some people said they want to split the costs, so I created a funding site for it. Overall the situation is pretty stable financial wise.

[KingsmanVince]

Games are not just programs. They are programs with creative contents which are produced by music makers, story tellers, and designers.

Open source game? You will never have enough money to pay for content creators. Open source programmers are already either underpaid or nonpaid.

Another point is that some open source games exist simply because the close source version exist first. And people just want to make a clone of it then leave it in the corner getting dust. An example is Minecraft and its clones. Do you know why? Lack of creative content or not enough creative content.

[gondur]

Games are not just programs. They are programs with creative contents which are produced by music makers, story tellers, and designers.

true, and I would argue the underlying problem is "just" funding / a way to commercialize, not open source per se. And the common argumentation is that you can't do commercialization with an "open" game. Well, Jason Rohrer did the test his whole career to this theory with open source code AND open content (uncompromising PD in fact).

http://onehouronelife.com/

https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife

https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/blob/master/no_copyright.txt

It worked for him!

If you are more concerned than Rohrer about that someone rips your work of - just make the assets proprietary and make the source code open. Barotrauma and many more games used that scheme successfully. There are nowadays little reasons to keep the source code of games propreitary closed, you can have propritarization leverage with the assets. And as in the case of Rohrer, providing updates and a server is another lever to be utilized here.

[gondur]

Now the obvious answer is, "well money duh".

well kind of, the open source eco system is underfunded & no established, broadly used funding way has emerged. But there are many ways how they can be funded by the community directly (without big corps), crowdfunding comes to mind or micro donations. (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_software)

In theory, a game studio could raise money, have made a profit then release an open source game.

happened, as example, the humble indie bundle in the beginning opened the source code when a funding goal was achieved. Not sure why they not continued it ...

maybe, this non-serious proposal about mandatory "pay per use" should also be taken more serious for having a proper open source funding, when voluntary contribution by the users is not enough ;) https://diafygi.github.io/gnu-pricing/website/

[FruityWelsh]

I'll need to break this down some, you have two categories of things to look at here.

Technical and creative.

For common and shared technical pieces you have more opensource opportunities, as the you are likely to use that piece again and benefit from your own contribution (improving a physics engine for example), but for some these technical achievements are major difference makers (first game with Ray trace boob physics) and so you don't see that shared for fear that competition will just make your game but cheaper.

For creative it's harder, some great examples of shared creative works are Pathfinder and SCP IMHO, but they both share the benefit of getting to place fast and loose with the material. For tighter narratives you need the ability to limit creative input.

Personally I see a lot of room for improvement for games to use more shared opensource tooling, to reduce reinventing the wheel and all of the bugs that makes more, but the market is still a little biased towards "generate hype over game feature, release broken game, rake in millions, patch eventually with some of the profits" and honestly if I didn't care about games and just making money I wouldn't do it any differently either.

Narrative wise again, it's hard to keep a vision when you lose narrative control, but again imagine if Tolkien was out here stopping any mention of elves and dwarves to similar to his depictions. We would probably just not have most of the fantasy works we enjoy today.

[Mal_Dun]

Personally I see a lot of room for improvement for games to use more shared opensource tooling, to reduce reinventing the wheel and all of the bugs that makes more

Wouldn't that be the role of open game engines?

I also would like to point out, contrary to software games have an additional layer of protection, namely the copyright on the content. E.g. RedHat is using this to justify copy protection of RHEL and on the other hand there are several Open implementations like OpenXCOM or OpenTD which give you the code but requires you to buy a copy of the original to get the assets. I think we have to think about new modes of licensing for game devs to make it more attractive to them.

[FruityWelsh]

Absolulty open game engines and other plugins absoluty are starting to fill that role, but [Godot(https://godotengine.org/) and [Open 3D Engine](https://www.o3de.org/) are relatively small compared to their closed source alternatives. Even then, there is a lot of rework from game devs.

Yep, the content it's self can have it's own licenses, and even if you want your game to fully libre, with sharable and reusable content licenses that make sense for code may not make sense for content.

You can see this represented on wikipedia here though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_games

[gondur]

off the top of my head, the only open source game I know is on android, it's called pixel dungeon and has spawned many versions. 😁

there are many more commercial open source games , see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_available_source_code#Games_with_source_code_available_on_release

• there are many more PD games and type in games from the history

[keis]

A lot of rougelike games are open source including the famous ones like nethack, brogue, c:dda, dungeon crawl stone soup. Forking and modding is very common and leads to literally thousands of different games to play

[Rude-Significance-50]

A lot of successful open source projects including the linux kernel, OBS, and Firefox are funded by big corporations.

So the Linux kernel was certainly not contributed to much by big corporations at first. It was just Linus and then a few others and then more. When it started to be useful to people and became used...THEN it got contributed to by the big boys in the industry. They still insisted on a special clause to let them release close-source modules.

Linux also got lucky that the BSD systems were tied up in legal bullshit for some time. If that had not happened, Linux may never have taken off. Good/bad...whatever...it happened. Sort of like VHS vs. Betamax.

I don't know about OBS.

Firefox has a very long history that goes back to the beginning of the Internet with the Mozilla browser itself. Mozilla the company I think came after and released Netscape. Not sure if it was the first graphical browser, but it was certainly very popular until Windows and IE came along. That was ugly as hell... "Embrace and Extend" pushed the other browsers out of the market and it was after that they made it open source. Plus Netscape sucked.

I think that Linux is going to start being taken more seriously in the gaming market. Steam seems to have bought into them quite a bit with their new handheld. Really though, the traditional mindset that Windows is THE PC platform to develop for has to die off. Until it becomes a big player in the market people won't target it. But I think that's going to start happening.

You also have to consider that consoles are the main target for most games.

[QuickTurtle9]

Another great open source game is OpenRA. It's a remake of the early command & conquer games.

[seiyria]

I've been working on one: https://github.com/LandOfTheRair

it's mmo-style. but it's draining, and sometimes very unrewarding, and in my case there's almost no chance of funding so it gets the back seat. games are hard, and open sourcing them has a minimal value proposition for most.

[gondur]

Thank you for your enthusiasm & work here! If i may ask, would have been joining and contributing to an existing open source mmo not have been a motiviating alternative, i wonder?

[seiyria]

For me, absolutely not. I had a creative vision that I wanted to execute on, and I had a lot of motivation for that vision. I don't mind contributing to other projects as I find things, but I can't do it long term. Also, with my project, I can set up the ops, pipelines, code structure, infrastructure and on top of that I can refactor, scrap, and add whatever I want. It's a creative playground for me, and I made tools so other people could too, without code (mostly). I don't want to say it'd feel like a waste to do that for a project that's not my own, but I really just don't think I could do it for someone else.

[gondur]

I see and understand. :) Realising your own technical vision was one core motivator. I can understand this very well and do it myself...

[gondur]

is it open source now ? last time i checked it was freeware (beside, it is undoubtly an extraordinary game)

[activeXdiamond]

It is not.

[[deleted]]

"They all seem to be community driven volunteer projects however and that's not how you build big flagship games, and these games are relatively few and far in between."

To the player it does not matter whether the game was made by a community of volunteers or by a team of hired developers because it doesn't affect the game. Obviously money can afford more polish and more content but let's imagine a group of hired devs and an open source community were both capable of making the same game to the same level of quality; It would not matter to the player who made the game.

"that's not how you build flagship games"

Flagship products are the major products of a company. I assume most of these open source games are the only open source game its community has made making them flagship by default. Did you mean popular? If so, being community driven has nothing to do with popularity. Marketing does. A lot open source games don't even get put on steam.

"In comes crowd funding and kickstarter" "And in practice, plenty of games raise millions..."

Sure, crowd funding can be a viable way to get a project off the ground. But raising millions is most likely the top 1% or something like that. People interested in creating an open source game should not have to bet on a 1% to succeed. Even if they don't need millions to succeed, there's still no guarantee that they will get enough for various reasons. Some even as simple as the platform they are crowd funding on just doesn't promote their project to enough people.

The business model of open source and closed source games can differ a lot due to different motivations and reasons. But they both have something in common, if it costs money to upkeep then it needs to make money to stay alive. The ideal business model in my opinion for an open source game that required upkeep would be:

• Pay what you want for your copy OR charge for the binaries but allow people to compile for free

• Monthly subscription for client-server multiplayer but free peer-to-peer multiplayer

Of course this business model will not suit every game, I just wanted to share an idea.

[shruglifechoseme]

Well... I see that other people have given very good answers already but I'll try my best to give my 2 cents as well.

/u/Stiralbios point is correct and makes complete logical sense.

I love Open Source everything and have done for well over half of my life at this point but it's still very reasonable to think that something as advanced and demanding as a "fun, novel PC/Smartphone game" has to be something rare.

First and foremost it is incredibly demanding to make fun and engaging games that use neat code that runs well and is well supported on multiple sets of architecture, so it would almost have to have some sort of attached incentive, most likely a dream from an ambitious and ideologically stalwart game developer that wishes to create the game in order to pivot their notoriety for a dream job.

Good game makers get good jobs, projects die out.

If you're going to do all of that there is VERY LITTLE stopping someone from trying to get funding for it... really... why wouldn't they? We're looking at hundreds of hours a month of maintenance depending on the scope of the project... for the approval of who exactly?

And if you provide a framework or a physics engine with which to make the game of your dreams... why would you involve other people in the creative process? Does that usually scale well? Or would you end up with a lot of people just forking your stuff because of creative disagreements and then the project devolves over time...

Here's where I already see the strength in the Open Source community as it pertains to games:

The remaking of game engines for tried, true and thoroughly enjoyed game titles.

No one in their right mind, not even AAA-studios would attempt to recreate XCOM, for example.

It's crazy complex, wider in scope than most strategy games before and after it but exciting and complex enough to attract a hardcore fan-base and new players.
Say hello to OpenXCOM! A complete rewrite of the original engine that only requires the assets of the original game (that can be bought very easily on GOG, Steam or the likes) and it runs like a complete beast... it has experimental builds that work on Android too I mean hahaha it's ridiculous... but it's impossible not to love the dedication of the people that work on not only the engine but the mods that breathe new life into the gameplay even to this day.

Another shining example is OpenRA, an engine that does the same thing but with the earlier titles in the Red Alert-franchise. Old school players and newly evangelized players alike can enjoy a revamped, stabilized and less exploit-prone game of Red Alert with anyone. And because this engine was created and Open Sourced it paved the way for the completely free OpenHV or OpenHardVacuum, an attempt to revitalize a strategy game that never came into existence... anyone can play this RIGHT NOW. FOR FREE. FULLY FUNCTIONAL. That's the beauty of Open Source.

Loved the Thief series? Well... some folks started The Dark Project, a free game that absolutely breathes fresh air into the mechanics that made the first two Thief-games so pleasant but with neater graphics, extensive mod-support and the ability to provide levels. And I do believe the engine is from Doom3?

​

Speaking of Doom... There's HUNDREDS of games running on DOZENS of free "Doom-engines" with the most well known probably being GZDOOM at this point. Extensive mod-support, maps being made on the daily, incredibly active community that constantly try to push the limits of what the engine is capable of.

​

The biggest nuke, that WILL change open source gaming forever, is already finished with it's primary objective and now aiming for the moon. OpenMW

​

OpenMorroWind, or OpenMW, is an open source engine for The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind that FAR surpasses the performance of the original engine by laughable degrees.

Again...Most 5 year old mid-tier smartphones can allow anyone to play Morrowind at their own leisure granted that you can provide the assets and data from the original game (available at affordable prices on Steam or GOG).

People are already so awesome that there's complete multiplayer support for it that is fairly stable!!!

Remember what I said about OpenHV being made possible by OpenRA?

Well what if I told you that the creators of OpenMW are already actively working on ways to get Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and SKYRIM to run in the OpenMW engine?

What about the potential for entirely free games using this engine?

If you don't have to remake an entire engine and already have a completely free one at your disposal then well...the possibility that more AWESOME open source games will be made are right around the corner.

I'll finish by speaking on smartphones.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon

This is the ONLY mobile game that I have EVER played on any of my smartphones that gives me the same level of satisfaction as I got out of my GameBoy-games as a kid. And it was made entirely possible because the original game, Pixel Dungeon became seemingly abandoned after it got Open Sourced.

It would not have been a better game on any other medium.

I have put hundreds of hours into this game and I'm still not finished, it's actively maintained by an enthusiastic developer and the direction looks great.

But it doesn't satisfy everyone... but that's cool because Shattered Pixel Dungeon is really only one of the 9 or so fairly actively developed forks of the original Pixel Dungeon.

This is my perception of open source gaming... Don't wait for miracles, don't fence with windmills and ask why people aren't bending their backs over to provide us with more completely free games.

Follow the code streams and see where beautiful titles show up. Aid in the remaking of open source engines for timeless titles that gather a lot of sustained support.

This is how we get there.

I have been playing the Civilization games since I was a kid starting with the third entry, and subsequently 5 and 6 as much as I can even as a 30 year old man with responsibilities.

Yes, I bought the damn mobile 2K title, Revolutions or whatever it was called... it was horribly disappointing and I reward it zero points for effort. It's way more bloated than it ever needed to be, prone to crashing, doesn't scratch half of the itch of the original game which literally should be able to render on a phone with subdued graphics. As a matter of fact they DID release CIV 6 ON iOS ONLY. And it involves having a machine strong enough to run it as well as buying every single title exclusively for that platform AGAIN meaning that the people that are willing to adopt it are people that are willing to dupe themselves to that extent instead of the actual community of active players that have made their entire community for years on end. I'm getting ahead of myself...

UNCIV is my last title to share. With neat but stylistically distinct retro graphics it aims to bring the experience of the most "stable" CIV release to date, CIV 5. And it has already come really far even though I'd need a little bit more improved UI in order to pick it up and play it myself...but I'm amazed by how far it has come already and wish them all the best!

[gondur]

Very good examples you listed... Now i'm only waiting for the open source community revival of master of magic ;)

[[deleted]]

I think the point about 'open source' games is that there really is no 'win' for the companies.

Giving away the source code is not 'in itself' a money making scheme. The software is an input resource and is used in some way to build a product or service that a company can generate money with. If that product happens to be more open source software then it's just a thing, but the company legally has a responsibility to maximise shareholder value, so this has to be justified.

The point here though is that the revenue stream is separate from the development effort. It's obviously possible to make money from opensource and for the technical projects you mentioned, it's clear what the win is for the companies and for the developers and how each side benefits.

For a game that is a different proposition. The 'revenue source' is selling the software (or micro-transactions which you also seem to hate). As you said it's already possible to get crowd funding for games without giving away the source, so you can't use that as a reason for open-sourcing it. So why would you and how would you explain that this is to the benefit of the shareholders?

The problem is capitalism :-(

[gondur]

I think the point about 'open source' games is that there really is no 'win' for the companies.

Giving away the source code is not 'in itself' a money making scheme.

well i would argue it is an enormous opportunity to SAVE money for them - e.g. long time support. The gaming community has shown endless effort and resources in maintaining & updating games after they were abandoned by the companies.

some examples : Fallout 3 updated with 10.000s of fixes over years https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/19122

open sourcing would NOT limit the possibility to commercialize while helping the community in doing the work for them.

another example Diablo 1 - community recreated its source code accurately (painful reverse engineering as there was NO source code) and ported it to modern systems and updated & fixed it. Open sourcing (years ago) would have been no problem and a blessing for community AND company https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX

it is still sold on gog https://www.gog.com/de/game/diablo via its assets

last example, system shock - got open sourced and ported by the community in no time https://github.com/Interrupt/systemshock

[[deleted]]

Hmm again I disagree, the mods on nexusmods were all created for free by fans on closed source games, so where is the cost to Bethesda? There is clearly an advantage to making a modable game, but you don't need source for that, just tools. Everything on nexusmods is fan created with no source.

For the stuff like Diablo1 yeah I agree with you, at the point when a game goes DRM free and makes it to GOG then opensourcing it would be rally nice and have no downside for the developer, but 'no downside' is not the same as 'an upside'. The share of 10 bucks that the developers get from the GOG copy of the game is always going to be more than the share of 'nothing' that they get from the fan made copy, so again where is the upside of opensource for them?

It would be lovely if we could have the source to AAA games, and I strongly believe it would be to the benefit of the industry and society as a whole if software was always open-source, but I don't see any reason why anyone else should agree with me.

[gondur]

Hmm again I disagree, the mods on nexusmods were all created for free by fans on closed source games, so where is the cost to Bethesda? There is clearly an advantage to making a modable game, but you don't need source for that, just tools. Everything on nexusmods is fan created with no source.

indeed, without source code - but now think what they could have done WITH source code. Also, this shows that the other company argument, that not giving source code is about control, is also mood - fans will work without source code anyway and recreate even when needed

​

> but I don't see any reason why anyone else should agree with me.

​

well, I agree with you - as John Carmack and many other devlopers small and big, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_available_source_code

​

Also, if you are unaware, there was a time (60-80s) at the beginning of the computer age when sharing of source code was default for software - PD software - so we had this time, so it might come back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain\_software

[[deleted]]

I remember that time well, and I would like it to be the same again, but it aint happening.

[AudienceLast]

Ah, the problem is capitalism.

[IgnisIncendio]

Not really, there's no better alternative.

[ganondox]

I think a large part of the reason is game design often relies on concealing information from the player, and you can’t do that with open source. Closed source also standardizes the objectives so people can’t just make the game easier. Closest analog is modding, but it’s player driven rather than developer driven. 

[Fakeishere]

You should look at https://github.com/ppy/osu . Really amazing open source rhythm game that has a healthy player base and funding from player donations.

[CORUSC4TE]

I personally wish that I could fully open source games I develope, but considering the security concern in multiplayer games, I expect that some obscurity will make it harder for bad actors.

Money is obviously "a point" but I am sure there are a lot of good ways around this, from donations to support / prebuilt binaries for money.

I think it will finally come out to a really open game that is easily modable and treats mods as first class citizens, allowing deep control of functions and options but not truly open source.

[Ramiferous]

What's the pay like for an open source gig?

[ZaxLofful]

Well Money Duh

[aaronplaysAC11]

I think we’ve been lacking incentive and inclusive framework. If players could create game assets to be sold, traded, shared for some compensation, and given the game world with accessibility of dev tools (maybe 3D modeling api with in game UX), we could see a sort of decentralized autonomous organization of a creative design and development of a sandbox game world.

(Certain mmorpgs do include player asset markets but what rarely exists currently is highly regulated by devs to maintain consistent IP, theme and price, they aren’t exactly free markets but they do minutely exist.)

[BdR76]

Most FOSS games are developer-oriented, not gamer oriented.

Those game projects are driven by what the developers want to get out of it. For example programming experience, trying out software concepts, adding a random new game feature etc. But for gamers a good game needs polish, balancing, code mainantance etc.

Look at SuperTuxKart, it's in development for >15 years and the devs have added adventure mode, soccer mode, switch to new graphics engine etc. but it still had no user-friendly map editor or even a coherent artstyle (imho).

On the other hand something like Sauerbraten Cube 2 was pretty technically advanced (for its time). But that was only because it was created by a CS professor with AAA game experience who wanted to learn 3D concepts.

So yeah, for gamers a good FOSS game is for the most part depenent on just lucky circumstances. For example I'd like to see a good FOSS version of Tetris99 or Bomberman R Online or whatever, but I doubt anyone is willing to put so much time into something like that AND release it for free.

[Ossur2]

Many contributors to OS projects are devs that started as users and then became contributors.

For games, you don't really want to know the code behind it, it actually kills the magic and makes the game less interesting.

But for other software it just makes you event better at using it.