alt Hacker News> The server binaries will almost always include other proprietary information that the studio will not want to release.
Or even information that they are contractually forbidden from releasing. A typical scenario would be a game developed as a fork of a proprietary codebase which was licensed from another company. Forcing the licensee to release material would infringe on the rights of the licensor.
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There's also scenarios like games that depended on GameSpy being forced out into the cold. Battle for Middle Earth 2 is a good example of this. The LOTR rights expiring isn't what got them. It was another provider going away in a puff of smoke and not enough player base to justify a complete rewrite of the backend.
https://www.ea.com/news/update-on-ea-titles-hosted-on-gamesp...
It would at least be reasonable to expect this for future games, just treat the server binary the same way as the client in terms of what code you include (there way be some more involved if they have to migrate off a reusable codebase but I think it’s worth it)
> Or even information that they are contractually forbidden from releasing.
Laws trump contracts.
Setting aside for a moment whether or not this specific legislation is a good implementation of the idea, I cannot understand how people don’t comprehend that this only happens because there is currently no obligation to release their server binaries or code.
The second that becomes a legal requirement with associated penalties, developers will stop licensing technology under those kinds of terms.