It doesn't need to be open source, you only need to provide server binaries to download. This was the standard until circa 2010. People were able to host dedicated servers themselves.
That would be an improvement over nothing, but closed-source means that the game is still going to die as soon as someone finds a security vulnerability (or even just a gameplay glitch) that can't be feasibly patched.
Imagine an MMO where special text in the chat causes viewers' clients to crash, or a glitch exists to duplicate items or money, or where anybody can crash the server to run arbitrary commands.
I play SubSpace (a MMO spaceship game released in the 90s) to this day. It was shut down soon after release.
The original server binaries were left on the original CDROM by a programmer.
Then PriitK, a creator of Kazaa and then Skype and Joost!, went on to re-create the client due to cheating/hacking, naming it Continuum.
Years later the server is reimplemented as A Small Subspace Server (ASSS), making it a complete fan remake of the original game (sans graphics). This is also when we finally got server side mods, everything before that was client only or a hack.
Thanks, it does. I've been playing since about 2000, came from Cosmic Rift / Infantry when they went non-free.
We're lucky we got Priit to release the encryption/security module so Continuum clients could connect to ASSS servers without the security warning. I doubt it'll ever be updated, someone will have to take up the mantle.
That implies the community that builds around it would not reverse engineer and remake the binaries. Which many already do (to be fair), it just so happens that it's way, way harder when the servers are entirely gone already for a game and you have no way to capture server/client traffic for example. Even if the binaries are flawed, just having those in there and being able to spin up a server to see the packet flow already greatly helps in preservation, much more if you have the binary itself and can also peek at server logic for certain things like conflict resolution, instead of having to guess post-game-shutdown!
> Imagine an MMO where special text in the chat causes viewers' clients to crash, or a glitch exists to duplicate items or money, or where anybody can crash the server to run arbitrary commands.
No need to imagine. Pretty much all of that (minus the last part) happened in Amazon’s New World MMO in the first few weeks.
Though I wouldn’t be surprised if the last part did happen and we just didn’t know about it.
> That would be an improvement over nothing, but closed-source means that the game is still going to die as soon as someone finds a security vulnerability (or even just a gameplay glitch) that can't be feasibly patched.
No, it just means you need need to limit players to a trusted community - but that is usually how things work anyway because malicious players don't need any exploits to make a game unfun.
Having a working implementation means that you have the means to re-make/re-build it from scratch. People are resourceful and would make a implementation without such limitations. Companies on the other hand after years of known vulnerabilities and still selling the game haven't fixed yet:
Although I get the idea of providing server binaries but if one has to absolutely do it, then provide great modding efforts behind it.
But I have found that the greatest modding efforts/community can be generated by open source. Balatro for example is easily modified in the sense that although it might not be open source but iirc its lua files are visible.
There are other games as well which have something similar imo although that being said its possible to create modding efforts without open source in general too with say something like for example old versions of counter strike.
Personally I would prefer open source though if its possible but I understand that some game studious might be worried about it but I don't quite understand it if they are shutting down the game anyway though. I think that @mjr00's comments are nice about third party library etc. which cause issues in open sourcing so its good to have a discussion about that too (imo)
I want to host a closed search server that's not being updated on today's internet. It might be good enough for home use, but definitely not if I want my friends to connect.
For playing with your friends you can use a VPN to not expose the potentially dangerous server to the wider internet. And sandbox both server and client as much as you feel needed depending on the value of "friend".
Technically most of their business is in packaging existing community-developed solutions to make the games run (dosbox, scummvm, compat shims and game-speficifc patches) into a nice installer. Not that that's a useless service.
Imagine an MMO where special text in the chat causes viewers' clients to crash, or a glitch exists to duplicate items or money, or where anybody can crash the server to run arbitrary commands.