[pbhjpbhj]

In my personal opinion, the actual problem there relating to "that's our IP" is the length of copyright.

20 years max will provide plenty of reward for creators. Some work on making copyright protect creators first, preferencing them over later owners, would also be good.

We also need works to be free to use, legislated so, after copyright expires. That would be to prevent, for example, Trade Marks being leveraged against users of works on which copyright has expired.

[atvcatole]

An example here is that Quake was released in 1996 and the source code released in 1999. Quake 2: 1997->2001, Quake 3 Arena: 1999->2005.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that these releases were negative to ID or the game series.

[ryandrake]

That's what makes "It's our IP" an excuse and not a reason to not release game source, once the game is commercially irrelevant.

I'd like to see an example of just one game that failed commercially due to a company releasing the source code to an older game.