> OAOL runs commercial proprietary servers and the community was not free to distribute the game or run competing servers during the commercial active period.

Reference? The source was dedicated to the public domain in early 2018, which coincides with the release of the game [0].

> So the model that made this economically viable was the proprietary control model.

This is a complete fabrication.

> Anyway, just because a handful of games can exist on libre models (even given what I've said) that doesn't mean the industry can survive with mandatory libre requirements.

Making a living from open source software is hard, game or no. Making a living as a game developer is hard to begin with and many proprietary games are not commercially successful or viable.

My point was that the ecosystem is a lot more complex than your reductive analysis.

[0] https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/commits/master/no_cop...