Should Cyberpunk 2077 go open source?

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That's a good question.
What other games went open-source? I can't recall anyone just now...

Half Life went open source?

Maybe we can compare what happened with the games that became open source.
 
The value of the data is in it's derivative. A competitor or someone seeking to build a REDEngine competitor now presumably has full access to the code and working notes. A clone would be difficult to patent, but if CDPR solved a problem that the buyer had been struggling with, well, now they know how, and that might even lead them to incrementally improve or transform that solution.

There are many ways to monetize on that. I'll stop here as we're now well in Verboten land.
REDEngine (as a whole) is not patented; very little software is. It is protected by copyright, but that's a separate issue
A game that is open source has its entire code made public for use by anyone, who can then use, modify and redistribute that code as they please without having to worry about copyright infringement.
No, that's not correct.

If source code is released under, for example, the GNU General Public License, or Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share-alike, then yes, the entire code is made public and anyone can modify. But they can redistribute only on the same terms they got it, which means that they cannot make money from selling it.

Also, releasing code under an open source license does not stop you selling the same code under closed source license to people who wish to make modification or derivatives and sell them.

So in theory CD Projekt COULD do this. And, obviously, I would love to have that code to play with. But nevertheless I strongly think they should not do this, or at least not without very careful thought, because it would almost certainly bankrupt the whole company and we would lose my favourite game development studio.
 
REDEngine (as a whole) is not patented; very little software is. It is protected by copyright, but that's a separate issue

No, that's not correct.

If source code is released under, for example, the GNU General Public License, or Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share-alike, then yes, the entire code is made public and anyone can modify. But they can redistribute only on the same terms they got it, which means that they cannot make money from selling it.

Also, releasing code under an open source license does not stop you selling the same code under closed source license to people who wish to make modification or derivatives and sell them.

So in theory CD Projekt COULD do this. And, obviously, I would love to have that code to play with. But nevertheless I strongly think they should not do this, or at least not without very careful thought, because it would almost certainly bankrupt the whole company and we would lose my favourite game development studio.

There are no absolutes. Basically, an engine's creator / owner can decide to do anything or everything with their property if they so choose. Some open-source engines offer everything up-front: the engine is made to be open-source right from the beginning and is specifically marketed as such. This will come along with legal terms for 3rd-parties that wish to utilize it for-profit.

Other engines offer "limited" open-source. The vast bulk of the engine is available, but the "core" code may remain encrypted. In these cases, it may require 3rd-party devs to purchase a more comprehensive license to access everything they need to build their game. (Just as one example.)

The monetization options are certainly not a free-for-all, but neither are they exclusively dictated by this or that policy. As with most things, a studio choosing to use an open-source engine is simply under a specific contract with the owners. Unique terms and conditions will be decided there so that everyone can pursue their goals and get a fair shake.


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All of this being said though, I don't foresee CDPR making the REDengine open-source anytime soon, I don't think. I can only speculate, but I don't imagine they're quite ready to give anything away yet.

And I don't understand why people feel that offering source code would "bankrupt" a studio. That doesn't make any sense. All that it does is market a tool as an additional source of income and potentially generate additional revenue in the form of 3rd-party contracts for use of the engine. It facilitates things like modding, which will invariably increase sales of games that utilize the engine.

The major downside is that the engine becomes more and more commonplace. The biggest negative is probably people becoming tired of the experience, making it harder to generate excitement for new titles being developed on an engine that people are very, very used to. (And still, look at the number of massive hits there are using Unreal or Unity or CryEngine.)

I would say the major consideration for something going open-source is: "Was it designed to be open-source?"
Will people use it?
Will they like it?
Will it be robust enough to inspire innovations?

Or, is the engine quite particular? Was it designed to do a certain thing in a very specific way?

Ultimately, though, it will always boil down to the chef deciding whether or not to share a recipe. If I know that I'm moving on to other things, why not give away the secret? If I have future plans for my restaurant, though, I may continue to keep it in the safe.
 
First of all, hacking is not allowed in any case, but CDPR's own technology is really bad, look at the release of two months CDPR in addition to fixing some bugs, there is little substantial improvement to gameplay. Why not look at the mod community.
 
Just my 2 cents...

I don't think it's a bad idea at all, and it would probably take some pressure off of CDPR to do bug fixes, as in the community could fix bugs and CDPR could sanction them. It would result in quality improvement, considering how big of a following the game has.

Another thing I'd love to see is user created brain dances! You know someone could literally create BD mini games for V to use around town, even entire storylines. I don't mean anything dumb like 3 mouth one desire but actual content.
 
That's a good question.
What other games went open-source? I can't recall anyone just now...

Half Life went open source?

Maybe we can compare what happened with the games that became open source.
Didn't id Software publish the source codes for all their games made prior to 2009? There are no assets in there, though, so you'd still need to make your own content, even if you built the game from source.
 
I remember a case when a famous one had a private picture stolen, he picture was sold, and then he just publish the picture, bad for the one who buy it, can´t remember who was.

Maybe CDPR could make the same move, but there is some conspiracy theories around that say it was CDPR who buy the stuff back from the hackers.

Anyway, making a open tool for modders and people play with the game is great, see Bethesda games, imagine playing FO4 or Skyrim without mods, X-COM 2, Cities Skylines, all games that are still in the scene because mods, sure CDPR help people from CPTools, but they help others to make a tool, if they provide the tool, would be much better.
 
First of all, hacking is not allowed in any case, but CDPR's own technology is really bad, look at the release of two months CDPR in addition to fixing some bugs, there is little substantial improvement to gameplay. Why not look at the mod community.
Just my 2 cents...

I don't think it's a bad idea at all, and it would probably take some pressure off of CDPR to do bug fixes, as in the community could fix bugs and CDPR could sanction them. It would result in quality improvement, considering how big of a following the game has.

Another thing I'd love to see is user created brain dances! You know someone could literally create BD mini games for V to use around town, even entire storylines. I don't mean anything dumb like 3 mouth one desire but actual content.

Well, I will readily admit that I quickly decided I wanted no part of the modkit for TW3 when it was released. I built a number of mods for Warcraft II and Bethesda titles between Morrowind and Skyrim (though almost exclusively for Morrowind). I took one look at the modkit when it came out as was instantly, like: "Nope." :LOL:

On the whole, though, I observe the following:
Ever since TW2, CDPR's engine seems to be heavily based on creating diverse, in-game cinematics. I remember being utterly floored by TW2's "cutscenes". Because they weren't really "cutscenes", but rather seamless integration of that level of cinematic performance and camera work in real-time. TW3 really put it to amazing use, and CP2077 knocked it completely out of the park, imo.

The dialogue scenes, responsiveness, and slick management of transition from gameplay to the dialogue's cinematic processing was just...wow! It's not even like you enter a "dialogue scene" -- it's just all the animations and voicework and music cues and scripted events and everything happening right in-game. Other games that keep cinematics in real-time are going to be a little stilted by comparison -- things like Half-Life or Bethesda titles -- or they're going to completely suspend the gameplay to allow for a cinematic scene -- like FarCry or Bioware titles.

Thus, my deduction is that REDengine is quite highly specialized, and to take full advantage of it, modders would need to have access to motion-capture studios and trained actors in order to take full advantage of the engine. Handling that level of cinematic delivery in real-time probably takes up a lot of resources that would otherwise be used for things like a more robust AI algorithms. (Though, I've got no idea exactly how it all works. I just can't see 2,000 lines of code resulting in the type of cinematic scenes that TW3 or CP2077 puts out constantly. I'd imagine it's more like 200,000 lines of code, cached and ready to go at a millisecond's notice). Hence, is the engine a good thing to open source? I'd guess probably not.
 
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