The results have been nothing less than industry shaping. 11 This means that fans of Doom have been able to download, install, and modify the source code underlying Doom for over two decades (so long as they were not seeking to profit from their endeavors).
The source code underlying Doom was released by id Software in 1997 under a license that allows modding of the game for non-profit use. By 1993, when id Software released Doom, a widely popular first-person shooter game, its fans formed one of the earliest and largest modding communities. 9 As computers became more accessible to consumers throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, so did PC gaming and modding. 8 Adventure Construction Set allowed users to construct their own graphical adventure games, which in many ways was a precursor to the map editors that game developers would later package with games to facilitate modding in the form of do-it-yourself game level creation. History of Modding: From Doom to Counter-StrikeĮlectronic Arts published the Adventure Construction Set, a computer game creation system, in 1984 on the Commodore 64, an 8-bit home computer that was introduced in 1982. 6 A recent re-release of the source code of an old game, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, under the GNU General Public License v3 open source license by major game developer Electronic Arts, is the latest step in a long-emerging trend of studios embracing interactions with their fans and promoting vibrant mod communities. Game developers have taken divergent approaches to interacting with modders, ranging from aggressively seeking to stop modders' activities, 4 to utilizing communities of modders to develop and release patches to their games, 5 to opening up mod marketplaces and releasing free software and tools to facilitate modding. 2 Mods are sometimes released by their creators (or modders) to the gaming community for free, but, in other instances (including some condoned or created by major gaming studios), they may be released for a fee, from behind paywalls, or as entries into contests. Fan-developed modifications of video games have been made since the 1980s, 1 usually by fans seeking to enhance or replace visual elements of, add gameplay features or characters to, or fix bugs or errors in a game. While many software providers choose to vigorously defend their intellectual property rights in the software they create, in the gaming industry, some developers of PC video games have taken a different approach by allowing or even encouraging fans of their games to modify (or mod) them.
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