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Comment by weberer

11 hours ago

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.

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weberer

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Terr_  11 hours ago

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.

  • pests  10 hours ago

    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.

    We even got on Stream Greenlight.

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum...

  • Fabricio20  8 hours ago

    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!

  • rbits  3 hours ago

    So then you just only play it with trusted friends. It's still better than the current situation

  • gsich  6 hours ago

    Modern Warfare 2 and 3 have an unpatched RCE. Still available on Steam.

    • Terr_  5 hours ago

      So perhaps replace "die" with "die or turn into a dangerous zombie"?

      Either way, the point is that the difference between open-source vs close-source transfers is pretty significant.

bluGill  11 hours ago

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.

Imustaskforhelp  11 hours ago

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)

neksn  11 hours ago

Closed source binaries rot.