why not open source the game?

[blitzo the imp]

i havent played for years because somehow both the gameo n pc and on console lagged. but when i saw it closing oi otught why. but then they also mentioned the story is finished in game

but anyway why not opensource it for peopel to make theire own defiance 2050 servers? ofcourse with some rules applied ;like mentioning trionworld in the login page and that they are using it with your permisison and include it in the agreement or something

then the game still exists for fans but the devs dont have to keep up the servers

i seen a few games do that with the agreements mentioned as well

[TheMysterD]

I'd be cool w/ the game going open-source, letting players host servers, and/or the game getting re-worked into an offline game.

It's a shame to see content, assets, gameplay and stuff go to waste...just b/c an always-online plug gets pulled.

[Macdallan]

Too bad, I just watched a review and thought I might jump back into this since I haven't touched it in a long time. Guess there's no point. Yet another online only game that would actually be fine as a peer to peer or single player game and doesn't need to die.

[blitzo the imp]

exactly i havent played for years as well because lagg and saw the post of it being shut down. instead of reading they finally solved the lagg. and yes iseen few games being allowed to reproduce if the developer was mentioned. they even made the agreement to mention this. they shut down the server and someone revived it by using this. more online games should do this.. and as mysterD said could also do with offline singleplayer/multyplayer functions this game

[Xargon]

Yes I agree, please release it!

[Odd Donny]

This would be cool, but they won't do it. Can't make money that way.

[blitzo the imp]

but dropping it altogether doesnt earn them any money either. because they gonna discontinue the games/servers anyway

[GMG]

Originally posted by Mr D.Spenser:

but dropping it altogether doesnt earn them any money either. because they gonna discontinue the games/servers anyway

this company doesn't care about garnering good will, they never have

[SKYLE]

Commercialism, there shouldn't be any more reason than that.

Another point, is that the game probably has patented technology, that you just shouldn't be giving out for free. Certainly not from a commercial standpoint. I remember the first time I played this at launch, the game took into account your latency to work out who won a PvP confrontation, something I had never seen in a online shooter game before that point. End of the day the company Trion, like them or not, they need to make money to keep the lights on, so to speak. So that sort of code is worth money to anyone wanting to make a shooter game that takes advantage of this facility.

They are not going to be giving out something for free if there is any remote chance of making money from it. The rule of any business "the side which most wants a deal, is the side that is worst off"

[Jet]

It's possible to make a private server if you capture packets. A group did it with Phantasy Star Universe and it turned out better than the retail version.

[Curtis@HeroesofTalon]

Originally posted by Mr D.Spenser:

but dropping it altogether doesnt earn them any money either. because they gonna discontinue the games/servers anyway

It does cost them money however. Hours have to be spent fixing the client up for custom connections, removing any third party libraries they may not be legally allowed to release in the codebase, it's not just a 'dump it out and have fun fans' sort of deal.

[crgzero]

If they make it open source then they basically screw themselves out of potential profit some time down the road. It doesn't matter if they ever actually intend on doing anything later on, it's the "potential".

There are many games over the years that IMHO have done better since being stolen (I DO NOT advocate this) like SWG for instance, that did much better after they were closed and acquired by players and I'm sure it pisses the devs off.

[antoca]

Defiance doesn't have a clear source-code actually, so there is nothing to "open". All original devs were fired shortly after game's debut. New devs were forced to learn how the code works to continue development. If you know about coding, this is harder than write a new game from a scratch. So new devs just cracked the code to go with updates on. The most sadnest thing is the fact that original devs' vision was right. They just were fired for nothing and without a chance. New devs have messed things to make Defiance more arcade and RPG-like. The servers were so unstable because the source code was not clear for new devs. Kiwi (https://www.trionworlds.com/defiance/en/2015/06/02/introducing-community-manager-sarah-kiwibird-walters-2/) was a face of new devs. End of story.

[retsam1]

Originally posted by antoca:

Defiance doesn't have a clear source-code actually, so there is nothing to "open". All original devs were fired shortly after game's debut. New devs were forced to learn how the code works to continue development. If you know about coding, this is harder than write a new game from a scratch. So new devs just cracked the code to go with updates on. The most sadnest thing is the fact that original devs' vision was right. They just were fired for nothing and without a chance. New devs have messed things to make Defiance more arcade and RPG-like. The servers were so unstable because the source code was not clear for new devs. Kiwi (https://www.trionworlds.com/defiance/en/2015/06/02/introducing-community-manager-sarah-kiwibird-walters-2/) was a face of new devs. End of story.

Indeed. All but save 1-3 people from the San Diego studio that made the original game were canned, and mostly due to Trion trying to stave off what eventually did happen to Trion: going under and fire selling the company.

They ignored most things beta testers reported and warned them to not launch the game on due to issues. Launched it and yep, there were problems galore. But they released it when they did because the newest Rift expansion at that time was a flop and they were literally banking on Defiance pulling them out of things. When it didn't, Hartsman returned to run Trion and the san diego office was gutted then closed over the course of that summer.

The "trans-media" gimmick was also a mess. I remember how the voting for the guy to be in the show was a full on scam as well.

And all during that time, Dahanese (aka Elizabeth Tobey), the head community manager(who later was fired too for how she mismanaged so many things both in Defiance and with Rift (she was directly responsible for getting Elrar canned))was a serious problem with those who were criticizing how things were going on. After she was let go (and OverloadUT aka Greg Laabs who was a long time buddy of hers at the same time) threw Trion and Hartsman under the bus blaming them and the gaming industry as a whole but she made her exit a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The enjoyment of Defiance for me was rather short once the cracks began to show more and more. This whole thing has just been a slow cancerous death. Defiance taught me to not buy into a game's hype. Not to say "well its got potential" and not to buy into betas.

[CB2001]

Gamigo, the company that bought Trion, has a certain way they perform their business model. Allowing the game to become open source leads to no profit for them. This video pretty much explains everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPZkfYWp9uo

[Whatever]

Because it's propritary technology. They wont ever be let nor want to share the game in this manner. Heck, chances are they've intentionally been trying--or another company owning them--to kill the game. Primarily saying this by the fact that they split the player base to Defiance and Defiance 2050, claiming that character import wasn't possible but sure enough both games even had the same bugs and old glitches and that worked to import....