Factorio Interview: Michal Kovařík (Kovarex) - Czech with English Subtitles
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An interview (Czech with English subtitles) with Kovarex, the founder of Wube software and the mind behind Factorio videogame. Factorio 2.0 free upgrade will...

cross-posted from: https://biglemmowski.win/post/2418820

For me, the most interesting point was the short mention of open sourcing Factorio (around 2:40). Kovarex seems to be very much open to the idea, he mentions that (as an approximation) maybe two years after the DLC after things calm down …

(Hope this is not much of a titlegore)

  • Lemmchen@feddit.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    Is anyone even still buying Factorio? I was under the impression anybody who could possibly be interested in it already owns it. It’s also quite cheap.

  • bazus1@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I’m feelin’ the love. Opening the game to modding to the degree they already have has lengthened the life span of this game for weeks months of additional play time. Making it open source would make it immortal.

  • frezik@midwest.social
    1·
    2 months ago

    There’s a model that id used for open sourcing their engines. The source code is open, but the assets (textures, models, sounds, etc.) are still copyrighted and you still have to buy the game to get them legally. This means the company still sells copies on Steam or wherever, and games that replace all the assets can still sell them without any licensing costs, too.

    I’m a little surprised this model never caught on. Even id only ever published the engine to the previous game–Quake 3 was open sourced a little after Doom 3 was released–and the practice seems to have stopped when John Carmack left.

    Possibly because nobody has tested it in court, or some other subtle legal issue?

    • Nemoder@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 months ago

      Games got a lot more complicated and many use so many 3rd party add-ins that just sorting through what you have rights to release can be a pretty big task and not worth it if what you can release ends up unusable with all of them removed.

    • Ferk@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 months ago

      True. Though I don’t think we would be in a hurry for this one, both Mindustry and Shapez have similar concepts and are already open source and quite good.

    • jsomae@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 months ago

      Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the source code of the Java version open for modding?

      • Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 months ago

        Not really. There is de-obfusication headers which They officially provide which can make decompiled source readable for the purpose of making mods, You’re not allowed to redistribute any of the code.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I’m not sure if the source is available or not. I remember some talk about it a few years back, but I don’t know what happened. Either way, just because source code is available does not mean it is open source. When I say open source I mean libre.

        • jsomae@lemmy.ml
          0·
          2 months ago

          I usually use open source to mean open source and free as in lunch, but in this case I assume kovarex is talking about open source but commercial and restrictively licensed. I could be wrong.

          • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            Open source is synonymous with “free software” as in freedom. Source available is likely what you’re talking about.