[watusername]

I always find official cracks* like this to be amusing and worrying at the same time. Worrying because it could mean that the current owners don't even have access to the source code anymore, and it's sad to see the source of those games lost to time.

Tangentially, this phenomenon isn't limited to retro DOS games: Rockstar was caught shipping a pirated version of Midnight Club 2 [0], and Sinking Ship [1] is another example of this in the indie scene.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37394665 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311522

* Legally they aren't cracks because they are fully authorized distributions of the games

[jerf]

You can stop worrying, and move straight into... whatever it is on the spectrum from hangwringing to panic it is you are looking for, I offer no judgment here... because loss of source code and all build artifacts is the norm, not the exception. Completely normal. Unfortunate, but completely normal.

[mschuster91]

> Worrying because it could mean that the current owners don't even have access to the source code anymore, and it's sad to see the source of those games lost to time.

This is way too common. It even happens to the best and largest games - the code for CnC Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 is supposed to be lost to time [1].

Often times it's just IP rights that get passed on when a studio collapses or gets bought out, and in other cases source code for dependencies (e.g. music or video player SDKs) isn't available any more.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43197320