Gaming Source Codes?

[winds]

I always wondered what happened to the source code for games once it's finally finished? Sometimes I hear about such and such games have very little chance of re-releases or updates because the original source code is lost and i'm wondering how that happens. If I were developing a game, it would make sense to me to always keep the source code of the finish product. Also, wouldn't publishers request that data as well?

[Ghegs]

The games with lost source codes are almost always older ones, made back when the games industry was an entirely different thing than what it is today. I don't think back then developers gave too much thought to the code and assets after the product was finished and shipped. It's entirely possible they couldn't guess how large the industry would become and they would need the original sources again for re-releases and remakes, so they didn't understand the value of good backups. So they just stored the stuff and forgot about them afterwards, leaving the disc or tape or whatever media format they used to its fate, subject to bitrot, natural disasters, and whatnot. I hear Sega is/was notoriously bad at keeping old source codes around.

You can bet the source codes of today's games are stored in seven redundant backups in servers located in different continents.

[Curlypaul]

I don't think publishers would have any right to the source, the IP owner would maintain that.

As for the missing source code, disasters happen, companies close and data gets lost but on the whole companies will try to hold on to the code where they can

[Hatta]

Sometimes developers are gracious enough to release the source code to their games. This usually ends up in updated ports to modern PCs. e.g. Star Control 2 lives on as The Ur-Quan Masters, which is playable on just about any platform including the original Xbox. (kind of killed a major reason to own a 3DO with that). iD has a long history of releasing source code for their games, which is why we have so many great source ports of DOOM (zdoom, prboom, doomsday, etc).

But for the most part, once a game is no longer making the company a profit, they don't really care what happens to it. They move on to new projects, old machines are decomissioned, and files get lost. And then there are cases where a company folds and parts of it get bought up by different companies, and even if the source code remains it's not clear who has the rights to it.

[AppleQueso]

But for the most part, once a game is no longer making the company a profit, they don't really care what happens to it.

Sometimes before then even. It wasn't unheard of for source code to be lost even by the time a game shipped out. Keeping the source code properly backed up and kept safe was a pretty low priority for a lot of developers back in the day.

From what I understand, good source control practices are a fairly recent thing, and there's still a lot of companies that don't put as much of a priority on that as they should.