this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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I'm speaking from ignorance but isn't the server backend often licensed and they couldn't release it if they wanted, even as binaries? Granted, going forward they'd have to make those considerations before they accept restrictive licenses in core parts of their game. And the market for those licenses will change accordingly. So there core of your argument is correct.
lots of licensed or bought code in development in general, but knowing that you'll have to provide code to the public eventually, means that you'll have to take this into consideration when starting a project.
Which is doable, but is additional time and money.
codifying in law that your customers must be able to run a server for your game, when you stop running them has the consequence, that you'll have to buy licenses that allow you to give binaries or code for those things to your customers. every middleware or library that does not allow that won't be a viable product anymore. It's not more dev work, it will change how licensing in game development for middleware and such will be done.
Making games online is also additional time and money.
Yes, but that's immediately profitable, which is why so many companies do it.
Why would coding something with less restrictions take more time and money?
Because you can buy other people's code for cheaper than developing it yourself, as long as you use it within the restrictions of the license you paid for.
The thing is either that license model changes, or those other companies selling the code cease to exist when nobody buys something they can't use.
It doesn't, that's why companies rarely open-source their code. If you want to publish it you have to make sure you have all the rights to do so, you have to code in a way that's readable for outside users, you have to make sure people can reproduce your build process, and ideally you provide support.
On the other hand, if you're not developing the source for publication, you can leave undocumented dirty hacks, only have to make sure it builds on your machine, and include third-party proprietary code wherever you want. That's faster and cheaper, so naturally companies will prefer it.
There's no requirement that the open source code released after EoL has to be pretty or maintained, just functional to meet legal requirements. Using other 3rd party code would be a hurdle to get over I suppose. It would definitely take a different approach to design, but after the initial shock of changing, it wouldn't be more difficult to do long term.
Maybe so, but that's a decision they make. Surely I as customer shouldn't be taken away what i paid for because of that? And if so they should have mentioned clearly upon sale that they would take away my product after 3-4 years (though maybe that's the case in those dense ToS?) . Everything else should be considered illegal and fraudulent if they planned/knew it from the start. Which is the case if it's a licensing issue
Besides, I'm pretty sure after those 4 years the code is outdated and they could renegotiate the license to be more open to release a binary.