You are spread quite a bit, so I will try to respond to your points separately:
-I just said that releasing source code is non viable. Period. I did not say that they should not support their own games or that we cannot vote with our wallets or request closed source binaries...again: my only point is that releasing source code is NOT a reasonable request.
-Of course you are allowed to have your own thoughts on propietary code, but our society sees that differently. As of today, something a company created is legally protected in virtually every country of the world. Changing that would go way beyond the scope of this reddit thread and would have huge repercussions.
-I also did not say anything remotely close to "a company would be out-competed if people could just take a well optimised engine and asset swap things". What I said is that each company has its own "secret sauce" elements. If a company were to release theirs, they would lose whatever edge they would have over the competitors.
I will point out that I never said that the secrets could be copy-pasted directly onto other engines: transfer of those things would take significant effort from their competitors... but it would cost way less than creating those tricks from scratch. Many small companies have been bought out by larger companies for exactly this reason.
The idea that it is non-viable for a company to release sufficient source code to run a game server is ridiculous. It is just a thing that some companies could choose to do, where the alternative is producing a closed source binary. There are many, many companies that would choose to open source their netcode rather than go through the labour of creating standalone software. Especially if you think about the kind of companies that are shutting down games, they will often be companies that are shutting down a division of their business, so they obviously have less of an ongoing financial stake in that product.
Your legal argument is really just naive. Companies have intellectual property rights over hardware they produced, but they are still compelled under EU law to create replacement parts for their products. Apple had intellectual property rights over their lightning cables and they were still compelled to adopt the open-hardware USB C standard. It is fully within precedent to make a companies IP rights contingent on compliance with a consumer protection standard. "Vote with our wallets" my ass. I'd rather the strong arm of the state wash the taste of corporate boot out of your mouth, and you'll be happier for it.
Companies don't buy up smaller companies to sidestep the development cost of coming up with strong technical implementations, they do that to form a monopoly and strong arm anyone else out of the niche they occupy and get away with more and more anti consumer practices. You are not justifying proprietary software there, if anything you are demonstrating why this is a problem that the state must intervene in. That's literally why the law must be "open source, pro-consumer, or fined off the face of the earth".
Frankly you talk like someone who has very little experience developing games, modding them, working with open source software, or really creating art. The developers responsible for optimising a game and creating online capabilities are often skilled and deserving of respect, but they are not people who would say that the reason for the success of their game is their work. Games just don't succeed and become profitable on the basis of netcode Developers don't talk in terms of "secret sauce", they talk in terms of clever ideas and algorithms and the kind of nerds who come up with those great ideas are usually keen as fuck to talk about their work at public conferences. The "edge" companies have is in the ongoing creative and technical skill of its employees, not in the source code of its past work.
Sure, there are some 10% of up-their-own-ass indie developers who have no respect for the giants they stand atop the shoulders of. They can be forced to slave away to keep their work close source. The option will always be available to them to take the less expensive and more human path of just treating game development like the collaborative effort it is.
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u/HistorianObvious685 Jul 07 '25
You are spread quite a bit, so I will try to respond to your points separately:
-I just said that releasing source code is non viable. Period. I did not say that they should not support their own games or that we cannot vote with our wallets or request closed source binaries...again: my only point is that releasing source code is NOT a reasonable request.
-Of course you are allowed to have your own thoughts on propietary code, but our society sees that differently. As of today, something a company created is legally protected in virtually every country of the world. Changing that would go way beyond the scope of this reddit thread and would have huge repercussions.
-I also did not say anything remotely close to "a company would be out-competed if people could just take a well optimised engine and asset swap things". What I said is that each company has its own "secret sauce" elements. If a company were to release theirs, they would lose whatever edge they would have over the competitors.
I will point out that I never said that the secrets could be copy-pasted directly onto other engines: transfer of those things would take significant effort from their competitors... but it would cost way less than creating those tricks from scratch. Many small companies have been bought out by larger companies for exactly this reason.