Ask HN: Is it rude to ask a game studio to open-source a game?

[trealira]

There's a game I really like that I've been playing a lot recently. I bought it on Steam. (I'm not going to name the game, because the developers might browse HN, and at that point it's a worse way to contact them than just emailing them directly).

The reason I'm asking HN is because I don't know whether it's rude to ask a game company to open-source their game, or if perhaps it could be seen as a threat to their IP somehow. I don't want to make a bad first impression and ruin the chances of them releasing it, or just have them dislike me. I've read posts on reddit.com/r/gamedev that imply game developers often get people asking for their source code often, and that it's considered rude.

There are multiple reasons I want the game to be open source, but one reason is because I want to attempt to optimize it. It's a 2D pixel art game, but despite being visually simple, my computer lags when too many sprites are on screen, and the game always consumes a lot of memory. My computer has played games with more complex graphics while consuming less memory and lagging less; I'm certain the game's performance isn't close to optimal right now. So, I'd like to try optimizing it myself and see if I can change their code to make it run better. It seems like it was programmed in C++ with a few helper libraries, rather than a game engine like Unity, so it seems feasible.

The game was released almost a decade ago, but I'm pretty sure they're still profiting off of it, so it seems like it could go either way. I'm prepared for them to say no even if asking itself isn't considered rude.

[brucethemoose2]

Ask them to open source the critical libraries, as little as possible, but keep the game and most of the code proprietary.

There is a good precedent for "open code but closed license," with Barotrauma being one of the most successful examples. Just dropping your engine code is not going to get a game copycatted and hacked instantly. Barotrauma is even a multiplayer game with public lobbies!

At the same time, getting your code to a state where one can open source it is not trivial for various reasons.

Another alternative is to do what countless modders have done: Hack into the compiled code yourself and try to optimize it. This is above my paygrade, but its done more frequently than one would think.

[trealira → brucethemoose2]

> Ask them to open source the critical libraries, but keep the game proprietary.

> There is a good precedent for "open code but closed license," with Barotrauma being one of the most successful examples. Just dropping your engine code is not going to get a game copycatted instantly.

Thanks for the tip. I didn't know there was a precedent for that. It seems like the only binaries that aren't 3rd-party libraries are split into a file called "libgamename.so" (a library) and "gamename" (the actual executable). That might actually be a feasible. Thanks for the suggestion.

> At the same time, getting your code to a state where one can open source it is not trivial for various reasons.

Yeah, I've heard it's a challenge when multiple companies collaborated on some code, and now one of the companies is defunct, and the copyright status of the code is unknown, so they give up. I hope this isn't one of those cases; I'm pretty sure it isn't.

> Another alternative is to do what countless modders have done: Hack into the compiled code yourself and try to optimize it. This is above my paygrade, but its done more frequently than one would think.

This seems possible. They didn't strip symbols, so you can actually observe the name of many C++ functions and classes using the tool `readelf` or `objdump`. I've opened the game up in Ghidra, and it seems like someone could do it. But, using Ghidra on it seems illegal, and I've never decompiled or hacked a game like that. I'd have to learn about that first. I know that for Cave Story, people used to do binary patching to make mods. Eventually people hacked together a mod loader for it.

[brucethemoose2 → trealira]

Yeah, people have hacked together all sorts of mod loaders for games, even on consoles from notorious companies like the Switch! See the botw modding community.

The only instance I can think of where the dev brought out the lawyers for such an act is Grand Theft Auto V, which is a somewhat understandable extreme case. I can't even imagine an indie dev doing it, for so many reasons.

[trealira → brucethemoose2]

Yeah, it's amazing what people have done with games whose source code they don't have. I may look into reverse engineering certain aspects. I can already spot certain algorithmic inefficiencies just from the disassembly (e.g. unnecessarily using strings instead of item IDs), but those probably aren't the main bottlenecks.

[stop50]

Fully opensource the game is not probable, if the engine they build is so easy, then you could have a chance to reimplement the engine. The optimal solution would be a bunch of binaries that run without assets an ask the users to provide the path where the original game is to use the assets.

[trealira → stop50]

That makes sense. I understand concerns like that.

It would be nice if we could just write a contract, one that states that I agree to use the source code only for personal use and that I may not use the code for a commercial product, or that I may only redistribute modded binaries for free and not modded source code, or something along those lines. That way, I could do the thing I want with it, without them worrying about if I'm going to try and rip off their game immediately. It wouldn't be as liberal as making the code open-source under something like the GPL, which isn't convenient, but it could be something of a good compromise.

Do you think that would sound agreeable? Do you (or does anyone else reading) know enough about software law to know if you can do something like that?

[MountainMan1312]

All software should be open source. They're rude for making it proprietary.

[trealira → MountainMan1312]

I understand why one wouldn't make software open-source. It's difficult to make a profit from software then. You either have to charge for a service, similar to Red Hat, or charge a subscription for continuous updates (for the convenience).

Sure, under the GPL, you can charge for access to the source code, but if someone wants, they can pay and then post it online freely, which then may undercut the business.

It would be nice if there were some compromise, like if after 10-20 years without being updated, the source code of software weren't protected by copyright anymore.

Edit: Then again, Aseprite is open-source, yet people still buy it on Steam instead of compiling it themselves. It seems like people will pay for binaries out of convenience, too.

[throwitaway222 → MountainMan1312]

Do you have locks on your house? If so you're rude.