Because then anyone could fork it and redistribute the game which I presume they don’t want.
It would be sweet for us if they did, but I can see why they don’t want to do that.
Comment on Minecraft is removing code obfuscation in Java Edition
chunes@lemmy.world 5 months agoI mean releasing it under a license like GPL.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Things like Minetest exist.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yes, but Minetest/Luanti is not a fork of Minecraft, it is its own separate thing.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Precisely.
chunes@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Not really. They could distribute source ports of the game, but you’d still have to buy the game in order to make use of them.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Fork it and use your own texture and sound pack doesn’t sound like much work tbh. Any major modpack could just redistribute the game as a fork and it would be awesome. But Microsoft probably don’t want that.
sus@programming.dev 5 months ago
That’s definitely not how GPL specifically works, and the small amount of sales of doom 2 today is not at all comparable to the massive amount of minecraft sales and minecraft-related microtransactions that microsoft is raking in.
azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
And Hytale got shitcanned!
It’s actually amazing that in an industry so hell-bent on copying successful formulas ad-nauseam (e.g. Quake&Doom spawning the whole genre of First Person Shooters), Minecraft has not seen anything reach the status of spiritual successor in over 15 years of charts-topping sales performance. Not from its own studio, not from its former creator, not with the Late Hypixel Studios.
There are survival games and base-building games and exploration games, but none of them are “Minecraft-likes” in the way that early FPS were “Quake-likes”. CS has Valorant. LoL has Dota. Tekken has Street Fighter. PUBG has Fortnite has Roblox. Minecraft somehow remains truly one-of-a-kind, a gaming UFO that eludes suits looking for a replicable formula. I actually believe Mojang themselves don’t understand why Minecraft works in the first place either, which is why every update seemingly either underwhelms or angers everyone. That game is lightning in a bottle and no-one knows what to do with it.
If Nadella had a stroke so bad he decided to make Minecraft FOSS, I’d be really interested to see what would happen. If any for-profit company was allowed to make direct Minecraft derivatives, I do think we would see a level of creativity and innovation that would dwarf even the already extremely prolific current modding scene.
C8r9VwDUTeY3ZufQRYvq@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
What proportion of those sales are for Java edition? This sounds like an attempt to make mods and therefore java edition into a more popular/appealing product. They know that most users are not going to do anything with source code.
chunes@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Open-sourcing Doom increased, rather than decreased sales.
Doom also went open source long before there were any sequels, and while it was still the hottest shit in PC gaming.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 months ago
I’d love to see that but realistically I don’t ever see it happening.