Cancelled Quake 4 expansion gets surprise GitHub release after former XCOM 2 developer discovers it on an old hard drive: 'This essentially saved my life'
"I came across this at a very sad point in my life, it was on a hard drive on a vintage computer I bought off Amazon," Marshall explains on the expansion's GitHub page. "Literally this essentially saved my life, I was going through a divorce and just happen[ing] to come across something like this was insane."
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/cancelled-quake-4-expansion-gets-surprise-github-release-after-former-xcom-2-developer-discovers-it-on-an-old-hard-drive-this-essentially-saved-my-life/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
80 replies
I am amazed this dude uploads it on a place like Github and even provides his name in the hopes of scoring a job. I will also be amazed if he doesn't get sued for the rest of his earthly posessions.
Yeah, I'm sure he'll be sued for a quadrillion bazillion dollars for publishing an alpha version of a canceled expansion for a 2005 game, the engine of which is already open-sourced.
Businesses do not care about any of that. They don't even care if it has been out of production since 1952. If they own it and you upload it, they are absolutely looking for a way to get money from you. All the money.
Many companies hoard IP like dragons hoard gold.
Going bankrupt? Cool, I'll buy you for pennies on the dollar. What am I doing with your IP? I sit on it with the rest of my IP. Because maybe somewhere in the future I might make a little extra cash off of it. No, I do not intend to ever sell any of the media I own the rights to! I'm too greedy for that, you cannot even look at my IP!
Better download it now before they get it pulled
Hal???
It was the only one I could find with a good framerate and I was hoping no one would notice lmao
It might as well be his doom (pun intended). Can't Activision file a lawsuit against him for uploading that on Github?
Activision and Github are both part of the same company too. Maybe a different Git would have been better.
No? GitHub is owned by Microsoft
Edit: I'm wrong. Apparently Microsoft owns Activision blizzard?!
Oh no...
Sorry you had to learn this way.
How on earth did you miss that? It was in the news for years, the biggest buyout with 69 BILLION dollars. It's actually Activision-Blizzard-King, King being the company responsible for mobile game hits like Candy Crush (that's why its in your start menu).
Wait! Does that mean King doesn't have croquis Wednesday's anymore?
It's 2026. Everything is owned by like 4 companies
Yeah :(
I like Codeberg, but I don't think they would allow a project of this size, especially given the liability.
Idea: we use torrents and go back to emailing eachother .patch files.
And still use git, tho? Cuz that's kind of the whole point of these sites.
Could use git, sure. Would make it easier to merge longer tailed sets of changes for sure, though maybe harder to pass around anonymously, assuming you're taking about repositories.
Well, now he must be quaking in his boots!
He heard the call and did his duty
But was he prepared to be under their overwatch?
He should get a medal for his honor.
That medal comes from a dishonored company, so it wouldn't count
What a world...of warcraft.
Makes you want to escape to the outer worlds.
Seeing as he obtained it legally, albeit by accident,
I think it would be whoever sold the hard disk that's at fault.Granted, IANAL and the American legal system is fucky.Edit: Yeah I'm not a lawyer.
Nah that's not how that works. He might have obtained it legally and accidentally. But he made the decision to then distribute it. He can most definitely get sued for that. If you want to distribute basically anything, you need the right permissions / license for that.
He doesn’t hold the copyright so has no right to distribute it. Like if you bought a manuscript from a book you don’t have the right to print copies of it and distribute it. Since you only are the owner of that specific manuscript not the copyright and distribution rights of the actual content.
Just finding something by accident doesn't give you the right to publish it.
If you found someone manuscript in the drawer of a desk you bought, you would not gain the right to publish it, it still belongs to the person that wrote it. Physical possession has nothing to do with the right to distribute, that is IP law that goes back a hundred years.
Okay well would he at least be in less trouble than if he'd made any money off it?
This is like those "I found a hidden safe in a wall in my home" posts on Reddit but specifically for gamers and I love it.
I had a blast with Q4 and been waiting over 20 years for the next Quake. Guess this will have to do.
For now we have another Quake 1 expansion pack
And it plays out well instead of getting Geraldoed.
Can we please have XCOM3?
I just want XCOM 3 and dishonored 3… is that really too much to ask for?
Yes
You just need to convince Satya Nadella that it'll be profitable. Like, billions of dollars in ROI profitable.
Why? He's been pushing AI like crazy and I don't think anyone has seen an ROI on that?
That's why you need to convince, not show proof :)
Xenonauts 2 is the balm you desire. Nothing worthwhile will ever come from Firaxis again.
Technically, Deathloop is Dishonored 3. Death of the Outsider kind of killed the base gameplay premise that Dishonored 1 and 2 were built on, though, so I wouldn't expect a true Dishonored 3... ever, really.
What's the dishonored game that came out after 2? I have the first one and saw two others on my wishlist just the other day.
Death of the Outsider is the game after 2. It's technically a stand-alone expansion rather than a game, though; it's more like Dishonored 1's Knife of Dunwall and Brigmore Witches expansions than it is a proper Dishonored 3, it just runs on its own executable rather than from a menu within Dishonored 2.
Deathloop is a masterpiece. It does not get the credit it deserves.
Yeah I didn't even like Dishonoured, but Deathloop was legit.
Even if the gameplay loop is changed, I’d like a game set it Tyvia, Morley, and the Pandyssian continent each. I rather liked the setting
Well, Deathloop is set in Tyvia...
Ah, didn’t realize!
Sorry, gotta wait for a Quake 6 developer to find it in an SSD in an old laptop they bought online
All the original devs are gone, it would be a shell of its former self. If the original developers are still together somewhere, we would be better off getting a new IP.
Original devs like Julian Gollop, who made his own spiritual successor ‘Phoenix Point’ in 2019? Which unfortunately turned out to be so-so.
Or you could look at third-party developers instead, since ‘Xenonauts’ was received much better.
He wasnt involved in the reboot series IIRC. Jake Solomon was the creative director.
That may be true, except I'm not talking about Firaxis' reboot.
I was, as that is what people usually mean with XCOM 3. A sequel to XCOM 2.
Why? Xcom has its first game released in 1994. The IP has been around for a long time.
Technically we already had XCOM 3. Apocalypse wasn't half bad, despite the weird realtime/turn-based combat system.
Because the industry has changed a lot over the last decade and XCOM would be more likely to be dragged through the dirt than to be faithfully resurrected.
What do you mean "gone" did I miss some kind of dev genocide after 2005?
Yes, lots of layoffs and devs just moving on.
Ah, so they still exist, but because they aren't still making stuff for you they no longer have any right to the things they created. Got it.
They have made stuff for me, just getting them back together to make another XCOM is very very unlikely. Do you understand how IP ownership works?
Yes. Do you?
You DO understand that just because the original developers don't still work in the same room that things do not become public domain, right?
I think you are confused. I am simply saying, the developers, the individuals, who designed and created the reboot series are no longer working at the studio who owns the IP "XCOM". Unless they are all rehired by 2K, them individuals cannot develop another XCOM. Do you understand now?
‘Xenonauts’ is probably your best bet, since it's said to be faithful to the original games and received very good reviews.
Maybe it can be ported to the latest idtech
I forgot this game even existed. It wasn't very good tbh
No way, that game was awesome! It was actually my first quake game and the story and bosses were really cool. The scene where you're captured was so cool and brutal.
The Strogg were such a good enemy. Loved the idea that they used body parts of enemies to make their soldiers. I'd love to see that concept with modern graphica.
Yeah exactly! It was shocking and cool to see an alien species harvesting humans and other animals. The Strogg seemed like a real alien military society. Half Life 2 is maybe a bit similar but I have to assume you've played it :)
Honestly, I wonder who would win. The strogg or the Combine. I feel the strogg with how they could make use of the bodies of Combine soldiers.
I dunno man, the combine have access to portals and other dimensions and shit. Either way I'd pay to see that fight!
I replay it every now and then as a part of my normal rotation. I still can never remember what the final boss is like. The mid game tower boss is much more memorable. The core problem with Q4 is it had an idenity crisis. It was trying to be a classic Quake game, a CoD-like and a Halo-like all at the same time.
I played it recently, and enjoyed it. It wasn't quite what I wanted out of a quake game, but as a standalone sci-fi horror game, it's a thoroughly fun romp
Fuckin baller man