Yup it is well known since a long time. Fun fact: I discovered that technique myself around 1991 (and still have the ASM + C source code for the DOS game using it). The first time I remember it publicly described was on the GamaSutra website in a post-mortem for the first "Age of Empire" game. GamaSutra was/is a big deal among game devs so the technique became "famous" when that post-mortem was made.
I wrote about it in a thread here called: "Why bugs might feel “impossible”" about two months ago and someone commented that the game TerraNova (from 1996) had a fully deterministic engine.
BTW TFA say StarCraft 2 (2007) used the technique but Warcraft 3 (2003) was already using a deterministic engine. Save files for Warcraft 3 games (including multiplayer ones over the Internet) consisted in only recording the player inputs and the "tick" at which they happened. This make for tiny savefiles, even for very long games.
So basically: several of us independently discovered that technique in the nineties. There may have been games in the eighties already using such a technique but I don't know any.
It was more than 20 years ago so I don't remember: quickly skimming through it I don't think so. I still have emails somewhere I exchanged back then with the dev who wrote the article so I may be able to find the date.
"the internet never forgets things" is more of an caution than a promise.
Don't say stupid things that will look even worse in 10 years or sometimes fairly mainstream things that will look terrible in 40 years, because the internet never forgets.
But, you still need to archive stuff you want to reference later. Even if it's still out there, it might be much harder to find.
I wrote about it in a thread here called: "Why bugs might feel “impossible”" about two months ago and someone commented that the game TerraNova (from 1996) had a fully deterministic engine.
BTW TFA say StarCraft 2 (2007) used the technique but Warcraft 3 (2003) was already using a deterministic engine. Save files for Warcraft 3 games (including multiplayer ones over the Internet) consisted in only recording the player inputs and the "tick" at which they happened. This make for tiny savefiles, even for very long games.
So basically: several of us independently discovered that technique in the nineties. There may have been games in the eighties already using such a technique but I don't know any.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27517074