open source the game

323 votes

given the amount of community contribution in terms of input, suggestions, providing the players to actually make it happen, the game should be open source. this would help prevent a small group of owners from making changes the playerbase doesn't want.. just like with the original game's various crappy clients. this doesn't preclude having a revenue model.

Not planned idea Suggested by: Connor Beckerle (13 Sep, '19) • Upvoted: 14 Mar • Comments: 15

Comments: 15

14 Sep, '19
Esqarrouth Admin
How would this work Connor? I'm guessing you have seen it or have some detailed plans?
16 Sep, '19
Connor
I just mean that I would like for the game client and server code to be available on a public repo like github. It would make it more of a community-owned project, and you might get free help building features and fixing bugs.
2
27 Jul, '20
Aflah Bhari
Use an open source license where they have to make their version open source.
1. Rely on it being a hassle for people to really spin up their own server from the forked code and provide support.
2. If they make a change you like, copy it -that's the benefit of open source.

Rely on providing a service more than just the code or even the "compiled version" for revenye. I don't think having the code available should effect your revenue at all.
13 Nov, '20
Aetec
I would like it since I have an idea to make a custom expansion (I have been testing it with friends on the physical boardgame). And I'd love to implement it in the digital game.
13 Apr, '21
Sun Wu
Suggest it might be useful to look at warzone.com for a model of this (accepted, not an open source but a huge amount of flexibility for both non-paying and paying members).
03 Jun, '21
Johnny Merged
It'd be nice and easier to be a part of the community!
08 Mar, '22
JUAN Admin
"Make code open-source!" (suggested by Johnny on 2021-06-03), including upvotes (19) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
02 Jul, '22
Tal
Hey, I would really love to see the basic version of this game open sourced :)
Just the base game and the server it self so it can be played on-premise.
15 Oct, '22
Erik
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pio/
06 Nov, '22
Jord4n
I'd down vote this one if I could. I prefer a single managed ecosystem that thrives with players, think this could be a distraction.
1
03 Dec, '22
AgentNemo
I also disagree but an alternative I was thinking about is provide an API for customers who want to build there own clients.
31 Dec, '22
D4G
The benefit of going open source is it can protect you from competitors. Servers cost money so no matter what someone will have to charge for the service in some way. However if a competitor offers a feature you don't have or offers a better experience than your product then you will be at risk of losing customers/players. Now let's not kid ourselves there is also risk such as someone taking the code and launching their own product but that happens every day even without the source code. Someone even linked in this post a free open source project however you aren't selling the game you are selling the services of providing a place players can go to play the game conveniently.

Me personally I would love to see this project go open source because this is right up my field to be contributor. Things I wish the game had but seems to be slow to implement. I would love to see a game playback feature, dice roll stats, better map tiles. I would love to be able to add these features.
01 Jan, '23
snake3y3s
I am all in for the game to go open source, but it seems unlikely :(
26 Feb, '23
Peter Burbery
I think open source is a good idea.
23 Mar, '23
Cody
Full stack developer here with 10yrs experience. There are definitely some risks involved with open-sourcing a project like this, especially something that is the game equivalent of a software-as-a-service model. Would be incredibly easy for a competitor to host an exact copy of Colonist but with a better or free pricing model for premium features. Would be hard to take legal action if Colonist wasn't extremely careful when picking or designing their software license and even then depending on the country it's hosted in, pursuing legal action against a competitor hosting a clone could be nearly impossible.

That being said, there is a ton of benefits to open-sourcing something like this. It could really accelerate development with community support. Suggestions and new features could be rolled out much faster and at a lower cost. I'm certain that I would drop a few PR's for some of the suggestions on here.
1