from the preserve-it-all dept
One of the more frustrating aspects of any conversation we have around the preservation of video games, something that is simply not being done for the most part today for the vast majority of titles created, is how easy and simple the ultimate fix is. It isn’t a secret. It’s not an arduous process. It doesn’t require any hoop-jumping for publishers and developers. You just release the source code for games once they’re past their primary sales window and let the public preserve it, and even build on it, from there.
Doing so would accomplish a number of good things. First, it would both free the publishers from the burden of having to preserve this artform themselves while also unleashing an army within the public that are willing to do that work. The bargain that is copyright protection would be preserved, if not achieved with higher velocity, and then people like myself and the folks behind the Video Game History Foundation and Good Old Games (GOG) can finally stop our bitching about how our cultural output is disappearing. Secondly, if these developers and publishers were really smart, they would use the elongated interest timeline in these games that would result from all of this to sell other, tangible things surrounding these games, like figurines, merchandise, and other items. Not to mention driving interest in newer, updated titles within these same franchises.
So if this is all honey and roses, why have such source code releases been so sparse? Several reasons, likely. Some of it, believe it or not, is purely a combination of vanity and insecurity around the code itself. Lots of folks don’t actually want to throw open the factory doors and allow the entire world to inspect precisely how the sausage is made, so to speak. Criticism of code is as ubiquitous as the untidy writing of the code itself. And, of course, there are the big player developers and publishers out there that bow to the altar of intellectual property, instinctually gravitating towards protectionism out of fears they probably couldn’t even articulate if asked to.
Fortunately, we’re now finally starting to see some shifts in the thinking from some big players. First to discuss is Valve, which recently released the source code for Team Fortress 2, both for the client and server code. And while the license under which the code was released doesn’t allow for commercial projects, it does allow for anyone who wants to play with the code to publish what they create on Steam.
Valve’s updates to its classic games evoke Hemingway’s two kinds of going bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly. Nothing is heard, little is seen, and then, one day, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Day of Defeat, and other Source-engine-based games get a bevy of modern upgrades. Now, the entirety of Team Fortress 2 (TF2) client and server game code, a boon for modders and fixers, is also being released.
That source code allows for more ambitious projects than have been possible thus far, Valve wrote in a blog post. “Unlike the Steam Workshop or local content mods, this SDK gives mod makers the ability to change, extend, or rewrite TF2, making anything from small tweaks to complete conversions possible.” The SDK license restricts any resulting projects to “a non-commercial basis,” but they can be published on Steam’s store as their own entities.
The timing here is somewhere between slightly late and just about right, honestly. TF2 was released in 2007, nearly twenty years ago, and has had an active player-base for a long, long time. The game’s community had something of an uproar a couple years back, mostly around the prevalence of cheating going on in the game, but that seems to have died down somewhat. Opening the code up to the public might actually help with cheating issues in the game, as well. After all, you’ve now got an entire world’s worth of people who can alter or re-develop portions of the game and code to stave off cheating.
But the most important part of this is both that the game is now able to be preserved by a public that has full access to its underlying code and that interest in the game can be extended by that same public being able to build off the code and create new, interesting content. Valve, meanwhile, gets to have that content listed on its platform, while also retaining interest in the Half-Life series that is at the heart of all of this.
All by relinquishing control. Imagine that.
Filed Under: archives, old video games, source code, steam, team fortress 2, video game preservation, video games
Companies: valve
