(06-29-2020, 03:03 PM)Haxus Wrote: I would publish the source code today if I could figure out how people make money with open source. SoH has been a huge investment in time and materials. I'm not ready to just give that away. If I work on it until I die, it will probably go with me.
As far as I know there is no way to make money from open-source. If there was, everyone would do it and never keep anything secret ever again.
I am not sure what you personally would get out of making the game open-source, aside from having more eyes and manpower to help with the coding. I don't think I have ever heard of any open-source MMO games, since it would require a lot more of the game to be based on server-side logic to disallow versions of the client that are made to cheat.
A few others games have like a "developer tier" option, where you pay extra for the game in order to have access to the source code and be allowed to propose code changes. For example via a managed GitHub private project, were you (and others) can review and comment on any proposed code changes before you accept or deny them. But the one example I have with a company doing this is not a subscription/pay-to-play game, so I don't know how you would reliably do it with Hazeron. I also don't know what sort of licencing would be involved for people that have access to the source code.
You would probably still have the server center bills to pay, unless another solution for that is found. I know others have mentioned many alternatives to server hosting or cloud hosting, but I personally don't know anything about the subject and can't say anything about what is better or cheaper.
Personally I would love to see the code too. I might not be an expert at C++ programming, but I have found and fixed bugs in a number of open-source projects.