A practical guide for game developers considering open sourcing their games. Covers the spectrum of options from source-available to fully open source (code and assets), with licensing recommendations at each level. Discusses copyleft licenses (GPL) vs permissive licenses (MIT) for code, and Creative Commons variants for assets. Addresses common concerns like cheating, embarrassing code quality, and partial ownership. Recommends GPL for code and CC-BY-SA for assets as a balanced default, and provides concrete steps for publishing source code and assets to ensure a game's long-term legacy.
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Source available: the bare minimumCopyleft with proprietary assetsPermissive license, proprietary assetsOpen assetsWhat if I don’t completely own my game?But cheaters could use it!But my code is embarrassing!So what do I need to do?Sort: