RGB Classic Games Forum

Dungeon Keeper is no longer supported by Bullfrog, who was bought out by EA and then de-compiled. EA got rid of Bullfrog and even stopped DK3 from releasing because they decided not to produce any other RTS games.

Dungeon Keeper is also in good need of some bug-fixes. Its IPX support is rudimentary and makes it imposable to play over the net. Its windows support (which is the best of the game) is very unstable and is almost imposable to play under.

The DOS version of the game however, is great!

Would it be possible to liberate this game into the open source world?

I am asking for help here.

Dr. Sassafras

I rarely even get a response when I email big companies like EA about liberating discontinued games. Getting them to release the source code is even more unlikely, since there might be code that they can't legally release. Since the only people who would know if any of the code is owned by anyone else are the former employees of Bullfrog, EA is unlikely to track down the programmers to ask them about it, so they'll just play it safe and refuse to release the code to protect themselves from liability.

If you can find a contact at EA, liberation might be possible, but don't hold your breath about opening the source. Generally speaking, a big company like that isn't going to be bothered to devote time and manpower to locating a copy of the game and having their legal department choose a license that protects whatever rights they want to retain (they may wish to ban derivative works, since someone might choose to add obscene, racist, or hateful content to their game). They have more to lose than to gain from liberating old games that they own the rights to.

Dungeon Keeper relied on licensed middleware anyway (I think Smacker and Miles sound system was involved), so liberation of it wouldn't bring a friendly license.