This is a list of

notable Notability is the property of being worthy of notice, having fame, or being considered to be of a high degree of interest, significance, or distinction. It also refers to the capacity to be such. Persons who are notable due to public responsibi ...

open-source video game An open-source video game, or simply an open-source game, is a video game whose source code is open-source. They are often freely distributable and sometimes cross-platform compatible. Definition and differentiation Not all open-source games ...

s. Open-source video games are assembled from and are themselves

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

, including

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

games with public domain

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

. 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 gen ...

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 a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

license with free content which allows reuse, modification and commercial redistribution of the whole game. Licenses can be

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

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. zlib was written by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler and is an abstraction of the DEFLATE compression algorithm used in their gzip file compression program. zlib is also ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

Artistic License Artistic license (alongside more contextually-specific derivative terms such as poetic license, historical license, dramatic license, and narrative license) refers to deviation from fact or form for artistic purposes. It can include the alterat ...

or other (see the comparison of

Free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

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

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 sh ...

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 written from scratch as a clone of the original with the ability to load the original game's data files such as music, textures, scripts, shad ...

page.

Source-available games

Video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

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

according to the

OSI OSI may refer to: Places * Osijek Airport (IATA code: OSI), an airport in Croatia * Ősi, a village in Veszprém county, Hungary * Oši, an archaeological site in Semigallia, Latvia * Osi, a village in Ido-Osi, Ekiti State, Nigeria * Osi, Ekiti ...

definition nor

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

according to the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support 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 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

), 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.

References

External links

LibreGameWikiOpen source games list
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Open source video games * Video game lists by license