If the decision-makers state that AoE3 is no longer profitable and they do not intend to earn any more money from it and they do not even see any possibility to continue doing so, then maybe making it open source would be an interesting idea?
AoE3 has already been the subject of one experiment with making it quasi F2P, maybe it is time for another experiment?
There is already a similar game with open source, namely 0 A.D.
Unfortunately, 0 A.D. has not developed a large community and only few people have heard of it due to its zero budget and lack of marketing. Meanwhile, AoE3 already has a large fanbase, thousands of regular players, and even its own ESO Community.
I wonder what the development of a game with such a large community and ambitious gropus like the WoL team would look like if the source code was open and modding tools were made available.
I think it would be great and it would ensure an infinite longevity for the game. History enthusiasts are amongst the most productive and active in terms of content creation, so that would make the an ever-springboard of passion.
Common sense tells me that the AoE3 Legacy must be a open source!!!
For AoE3DE - devs may change their minds and come back in next year, for example. But please also open the source if AoE3DE really died.
At this point, since we are never getting DLC again, the only way WE can even come close to repairing their image with AoE3 players is by making EVERYTHING (base game, DLCs, cosmetics, soundtrack) free and releasing a whole host of modding tools for people to put out new civs, units, techs, cards, home cities, politicians, wonders, etc.
That is, if they don’t just release the source code for free.
If they had half a braincell and wanted to funnel AoE3 players to other games they’d also allow AoE3 players to buy other Age of Empires games at a super steep discount (like 75% off) with proof of purchase of 3:DE.
Games aren’t just software.
If they release the source code of the engine then they still have all the copyright on all of the contents of the game.
Not sure how much it would help if the engine was open source.
Duh, so somebody can emasculate the corporate overlords at World’s Edge by making superior content on a shoestring or entirely non-existent budget.
This should, by the way be a primary or secondary objective of any community-created content from here on out, making the shareholders and corporate offers look bad.
Won’t happen, unfortunately. I’d love to see it, but given how the game uses licensed technology (Bink Video and Granny Animation), the devs would have to be careful to not release any of that code, lest they break contract.
Bink Video and Granny Animation contracts for AoE3 Legacy - was ended long ago. Common Sense. Or don’t need Bink Video and Granny Animation, fans learned how to make animations
There’s a still lot of legacy code in the game (such as the protoy.xml, techtreey.xml, etc.). Units still use granny animations, you can verify by extracting the art bar file and seeing how they have .gr2 animation files for the new units. You can also verify in the credits section in the game where they credit Bink Video and Granny Animations.