Disclaimer: I really do not mind buying the game actually and it is probably one of the games that really deserve to be bought. This is really just a (maybe stupid) question out of curiosity.

So, I have been interested in homm3 for a while and I recently found out that apparently there is a free and open source rewrite for the game called VCMI.

First I figured since this is a complete rewrite that I can just download and run it to play homm3 but the website did state that apparently you should buy the game to get the game files but is this really how most people go on about this? Are the game files lying around somewhere so you can easily use VCMI? I mean its just assets from what I know..

Or do I just have to buy/pirate the game?

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[–] ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 4 weeks ago

There's tons of stuff like that. E.g. open source Doom ports that still require the .wad files of the game.

Recently stumbled upon a remake of Dark Forces, called The Force Engine. High resolution play enabled, save games, crosshair. These kinds of mods aim to make the games better but they cannot legally provide the assets for them.