We all now that the Definitive Editions were released unfinished, with patching ongoing.
In case of AoE2:DE it’s now 20 month after release, and there is no hint that the game will be finished.
By the looks of it, there is work left on the backend for multiple full time years.
AoE2:DE will have upcoming DLCs to finance the work, but this is not the case for the other titles.
Simply because the players left already (guess why??).
If it is too expensive to finish the games, in a reasonable time, the source code should be released.
I am sure: The community will fix and finish the games.
So is the popularity of AoE2 reflected in the software quality so far? No.
And why wouldn’t it make sense? Then can still make public DLCs and monetize the game to the maximum, even if it is not closed source. They don’t have to give up the copyrights.
And in case of AoE1:DE and AoE3:DE i doubt that the ongoing income from sales will be enough to finish the games.
So what does the management want? Their major franchises in partically finished remakes, where you see bugs immedialty when opening the game, before crashing back to desktop?
If you open source it, you will need people to review external PRs. In particular, it is possible that malicious PRs are issued. Since the game needs to be updated often unlike other open source codes, the malicious code can go very wlid
Also easier for hackers to create hack once they have the source code
I dont think MS will allocate human resources for all the troubles open sourcing AOE
Releasing the source code wouldn’t do anything unless the community is prepared to run a full network of authoritative servers like Microsoft does in order to support multiplayer games with whatever fixes they are able to come up with, not to mention matchmaking servers.
That, or go back to peer to peer networking and lobby systems, which would be absolutely terrible.
You are talking about ripping the game, that is not what I mean.
I am talking about giving people the capability to spot bad programming code in the first place.
Or make minor additions. Like a button to invite all members of the previous match, etc.
Well, if I find a code bug or a bad implementation, I would report that. Why not?
You would ‘’report’’ it (whatever the way) but you would not take an active part yourself in the community effort you want to impulse ? We shall then have the same discussion in an equivalent thread in a near future on how badly the new dev team is working and let’s transfer the game development to another team …
In terms of development this is hilarious , say this to a company or a dev, to release the source code they go off laughing or probably get a heart attack.
Never gonna happen , nor it should happen.
Also it would breed a new generation of hacks and what not.