This is a list of
notable open-source video games. Open-source video games are assembled from and are themselves
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
, including
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
games with public domain
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer.
Since a computer, at base, only ...
. This list also includes games in which the
engine
An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy.
Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...
is open-source but other data (such as art and music) is under a more restrictive license.
Open engine and free data
The games in this table are developed under a
free and open-source
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...
license with free content which allows reuse, modification and commercial redistribution of the whole game. Licenses can be
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
,
GPL,
BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...
,
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
,
zlib
zlib ( or "zeta-lib", ) is a software library used for data compression as well as a data format. zlib was written by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler and is an abstraction of the DEFLATE compression algorithm used in their gzip file compre ...
,
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
,
Artistic License
Artistic license (and more general or contextually-specific, derivative terms such as creative license, poetic license, historical license, dramatic license, and narrative license) refers to deviation from fact or form for artistic purposes. It ...
or other (see the comparison of
Free and open-source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...
and the
Comparison of free and open-source software licenses
This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and ...
).
Open-source games with non-free data (or not entirely free data)
Only the game engines in this table are developed under an open-source license, which means that the reuse and modification of only the code is permitted. As some of the games' content created by the developers (sound, graphics, video and other artwork) is proprietary or restricted in use, the whole games are non-free and restricted in reuse (depending on the content license). The motivation of developers to keep own game content non-free while they open the source code may be the protection of the game as sellable commercial product. It could also be the prevention of a commercialization of a free product in future, e.g. when distributed under a non-commercial license like
CC NC. By replacing the non-free content with free content, these games could also become completely free. In practice, many projects include a mixture of free and non-free own content.
Open-source remakes with non-free data from the proprietary original
The
video game remake
A video game remake is a video game closely adapted from an earlier title, usually for the purpose of modernizing a game with updated graphics for newer hardware and gameplay for contemporary audiences. Typically, a remake of such game software ...
s in this table were developed under an open-source license which allows usually the reuse, modification and commercial redistribution of the code. The required game content (artwork, data, etc.) is taken from a proprietary and non-opened commercial game, so that the whole game is non-free. See also the
Game engine recreation
Game engine recreation is a type of video game engine remastering process whereby a new game engine is Code rewriting, rewritten from scratch as a Clone (computing), clone of the original with the ability to load the original game's data files suc ...
page.
Source-available games
Video game
A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
s in this table are
source-available
Source-available software is software released through a source code distribution model that includes arrangements where the source can be viewed, and in some cases modified, but without necessarily meeting the criteria to be called ''open-source ...
, but are neither
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
according to the
OSI definition nor
free software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
according to the
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...
. These games are released under a license with limited rights for the user, for example only the rights to read and modify the game's source for personal or educational purposes but no reuse rights beside the game's original context are granted. Typical licenses are the creative commons "non-commercial" licenses (e.g.
CC BY-NC-SA),
MAME like licenses or several
shared source licenses.
Proprietary developed games, later released under varying licenses
For games that were originally developed proprietary as commercial closed source product, see also
:Commercial video games with freely available source code.
See also
*
List of game engines
*
List of open-source first-person shooters
*
List of commercial video games with available source code
*
List of commercial video games released as freeware
*
List of freeware games
This is a selected list of freeware video games implemented as traditional executable files that must be downloaded and installed. Freeware games are games that are released as freeware and can be downloaded and played, free of charge, for an unli ...
*
Homebrew
*
Linux gaming
Linux-based operating systems can be used for playing video games. Because few games natively support the Linux kernel, various software has been made to run Windows games, software, and programs, such as Wine, Cedega, DXVK, and Proton, and ma ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Open source video games
*
Lists of video games by license
Free software lists and comparisons