Urban Terror HD: Going Away From Open-Source

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Urban Terror HD: Going Away From Open-Source

It's been two years since the release of Urban Terror 4.1, an open-source first person shooter powered by the ioquake3 engine that started out originally as a Quake 3 mod. Extensive work has been made towards the next release, Urban Terror 4.2, with significant improvements being made from new maps and visuals to a new graphics renderer. However, this past week the Urban Terror developers announced some rather surprising changes, which includes Urban Terror no longer being distributed as an open-source, GPL game...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODc3Mw

[not.sure]

Were they bought by Oracle, too?

SCNR

[mrplow]

ohh HD! wow does that mean its limited to 1080p? Gotta love buzzwords

[chronniff]

no, the HD stands for horrible doody...

[Tares]

who cares... that game died with beta 2.6a.

[snuwoods]

I think this is a good thing because it is a potential step towards a broadened linux game market, not just open-source games.

[cruiseoveride]

Whats really interesting here is that they are not trying to capitalise on the much updated ioquake3 engine (compared to the original circa 1999 quake3 engine).

I think this is a very strange move. And the only supporters thus far seem to extend from the illusion that a closed system would deter online cheating.

And why on earth license the tech3 engine? Its a friggin' dinosaur. Even the tech4 engine is looking old these days.

Strange move indeed.

[Zhick]

Well I never liked the game anyway, so I couldn't care less.
Still I agree it's a very weird move. I don't buy their argument of 'not having to keep backwards compatible'. They could've just forked ioquake and ship their own version for that.
I guess they want to capitalize on their work, which is alright with me. I just think it'd be easier for them to just keep using the gpl'd code and just sell the game-assets (models, maps, etc) to which they own the rights anyway, just like steelstorm is doing.

[Xanbreon]

Well that sucks, I love playing UT from time to time, if its going paid for and closed source then that goes out the window.

I dont know how the already seemingly limited user-base will like paying for it, if your going to pay for it, why not buy CS:S or the like?

[FunkyRider]

Next announcement will be this stupid game is exclusive for Windows and MacOS X. No more Linux builds cuz the potential 'market' is negligible. Bah