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Quantum Lock suspends sales due to developers losing access to source code (store.steampowered.com)

submitted 3 months ago by Aatube@kbin.melroy.org to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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QL was our first game and although it was a big milestone for us, it was created at a time before we understood version control software. We do not have access to the source code anymore and cannot make any fixes or changes to the game. Because of this, we have decided to disable the ability for anyone to buy copies of the game. Thank you for your time and feel free to reach out to us.

The trailer looks like an awesome vaporwave freeze tag indie game.

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[-] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 145 points 3 months ago

To be fair to the developers, they do elaborate a little further in the comments:

Hey everyone, We appreciate the sudden enthusiasm for our game. When we launched it in 2015 into early access and 2016 into full, we were at the vanguard of asymmetrical games. It was exciting, but it was also our first step down the Dunning Kruger curve. QL has bugs that we cannot fix, shaky net code and overall sloppy design. We left the game up for this long so that players who had friends that wanted to play, could still get a copy. However it has been 9 years with minimal to no activity. So we felt it was right to remove it now.

I don't know enough about this game or it's community to comment much, but the devs don't seem to be bad guys - seems like a story of naive developers making a mistake, but doing their best for their community with what they had. For a niche online game with no DLCs, 9 years is hardly a bad run.

[-] laughterlaughter@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

it's community

its* community

[-] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 months ago

Thank fuck your hear too correct him, I didnt understand what he meant because of the typo!

[-] laughterlaughter@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

You're welcome.

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[-] Rogue@feddit.uk 75 points 3 months ago

Why not just give it away for free? It always seems odd to me that games just disappear rather than being allowed an elegant death of old age.

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 33 points 3 months ago

https://www.stopkillinggames.com

[-] Fribbtastic@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago

Probably depends on the background as well. They could have hardware running (multiplayer server) that gets so little activity that there is no benefit and only loses them money.

It also doesn't look like the game has steam integration.

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 20 points 3 months ago

Then why not release the binaries for running such server? I'm sure a group of people could figure out how to decompile and make a change so the game attempts to connect to a different master host

[-] towerful@programming.dev 9 points 3 months ago

If they weren't using VCS, I bet they have creds embedded in the source.

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[-] Fribbtastic@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Well, i mean i would be all for that but in reality it might not be that easy. It could rely on dependencies that are proprietary that cannot be shipped or provided with the project.

It could alone be that the connection is hard coded in the game itself so instead of just booting up the server and being able to play you would now have to do something to the game itself too that it finds your server. Nothing really that cannot be addressed, I mean people could do that with ragnarok online private servers but not something your normal gamer could do.

[-] insight06@lemmy.world 56 points 3 months ago

A good decompiler and an auto-formatter might leave them with a nicer copy of their source code than they had in the first place.

[-] warmaster@lemmy.world 46 points 3 months ago

QL was our first game and although it was a big disappointment losing the source code it was lost at a time before we understood decompiler and auto-formatter software.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 39 points 3 months ago

The time at which the source code was lost is irrelevant for decompilation, decompilation uses the binary files. Those are the files that are out there being played right now.

Until recently decompilers tended to produce rough and useless code for the most part, but I'm looking forward to seeing what modern LLMs will bring to decompilation. They could be trained specifically for the task.

[-] awesome_lowlander@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 3 months ago

You're missing the point of the comment you're replying to, which is that the devs don't understand decompilers RIGHT NOW, and it's formatted in a tongue in cheek way similar to their current comment about VCS

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[-] CodeBlooded@programming.dev 29 points 3 months ago

So, basically, “we started learning Git and accidentally blew away the only copy of the code base we had!” 😂

I’ve watched new developers delete 2 weeks worth of development by misunderstanding Git🤦‍♂️

[-] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 18 points 3 months ago

No, they lost the code and couldn't get it back because they didn't use Git or upload it.

[-] samus7070@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago

The reflog is your friend in situations like that.

[-] mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 3 months ago

So they were developing the game by sharing zips of their versions? OMG. There should be a tutorial of minimum Dev knowledge for wanna be new developers. They have very cool ideas, but the way they program...

For example Shadows of Doubt. Was running super bad last time I checked out. I think that too much accessibility to game Dev tools is lowering the quality of a lot of games (in resource hungry sense).

[-] poke@sh.itjust.works 18 points 3 months ago

Check out the dev stories from PalWorld, they bought a LOT of USB drives haha.

[-] mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 months ago

That sounds hella painful

[-] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 11 points 3 months ago

IIRC it was made by two people, only one of which was a developer.

[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 months ago

It is still in early access and optimising the game is their current goal according to the road map, though as the whole concept of the game is about simulating every NPC properly at all times it's always going to be really heavy game to run.
And you are right about accessibility making resource hungry games more common - they allow indies to make projects and use concepts that would have been scrapped as technically non-viable by a publisher before. Shadows of Doubt started development back in 2015, which would have meant reducing the scope of the game until it ran on a PS4. Being indie, they could just do whatever instead, and now it's going to be enough if they can make it run acceptably on a PS5.