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@SuperSnekFriend
What I'm curious about is: why Command and Conquer of all games? There's so many ancient franchises and games under EA's possession. Why CnC specifically is getting this love? My only guess is that maybe there's a contract the devs of the games, or someone, made with EA that stipulated they needed to release source code at some point. I can't believe EA would just do this out of their own volition, and for only this franchise alone.
@lina @SuperSnekFriend
Exactly. Though... there's also a different possibility, that is sadder. EA might have lost most of the source code of older games.
It's well known that Blizzard lost some source code. They had lost even the original StarCraft source code, but were lucky enough to recover it. But I think that Diablo 1, and the first 2 Warcraft games are actually completely lost. It's why Blizzard took the time to remaster StarCraft 1, Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3, but not the previous games.
So it's not hard to imagine a similar story being true for EA.
@lina @SuperSnekFriend
Pretty sure he could have been sued to hell and back if he did it. And it's probably the only reason we got a StarCraft remaster in the first place.
@lina @SuperSnekFriend
Let me put it another way. We have leaked source code of Windows XP. Have you seen anyone fixing the code up and compiling XP for new hardware? No. Because you'd face the same issues as a discovered leaker. You legally can't do shit with leaked code. Even trying to remake the engine is risky, because if Blizzard found you inspired yourself from the original source code, they could still get you.
You can't do remasters, you can't do ports, and you can't spruce up the engine with vulkan or something, without Blizzard being on your ass if the source code you're working with wasn't released under an open-source license.
Literally your only hope to keep StarCraft alive would have been if Blizzard died (went bankrupt without someone buying them up). Only then could you have made use of the leaked source code, because there wouldn't have been anyone to sue you.
And sure, Blizzard might die someday, but not soon, and someone will buy their intellectual property and be the rightful owners of StarCraft's source code. And you'll still not be legally able to use it.
@lina @SuperSnekFriend
No it's not. On the contrary, their devs go out of their way to ignore and avoid looking at the XP leak, because they can't allow themselves to even accidentally copy some code from there.
