Assuming I did the tags right this time... some readers will already have an idea of just where this is going. So, let's talk some future turkey. At some point in time... Destiny servers are going to get turned off. Some accountant is going to determine that the amount of resources being generated by the product are not enough to justify the ongoing expenses of maintaining the product. So, the accountant will pull out a little red stamp, and the next thing players receive is a message that their servers are being turned off. Some people move on, find a different game. Others? They Don't. Underground communities have long worked to smuggle source code and binary client builds out in order to run private servers of yesteryear's hits. Others turn towards aggressive reverse engineering, and short of a Cease and Desist order being generated as one Korean publisher is known for, can succeed in bringing a favored game back from the dead. Btw, those interested in #SaveCoH... Anyways, my point here is that it's a really good idea for a publisher and developer to already have in mind how their exit from the game is going to be handled. Turning over the reigns of a popular or beloved Intellectual Property to the fanbase will go a long way towards cultivating a player base that will continue to purchase future products... say in this case [i]Destiny 2: The Traveller's Gone Insane[/i]... However, how exactly does a commercially oriented publisher and publisher actually accomplish such an act? How exactly could they turn over an existing title to the playerbase... but still retain control? The answer's actually pretty simple. Combination of a couple different licenses and separation of game assets: [i]Primary[/i] and [i]Secondary[/i] sections. The [i]Primary[/i] game assets are defined as the computational engines that actually process code. The [i]Secondary[/i] game assets are defined as the content resources, such as artwork. The [i]Primary[/i] game assets can be placed under a Open Source license that protects the interests of the developer. Such a license would be say: [b]GPLv3.[/b] As a note, this isn't theory. IDSoftware has been placing their computational engines under GPL licenses for literal decades. Keep in mind that the GPL was originally designed as a license that would permit authors to charge a financial cost for the development of the code. While a significant amount of GPL software is distributed under [i]gratis[/i] conditions, meaning without direct financial cost, that does not mean that authors do not have the option to charge for their code. Pretty much a perfect set-up for a game developer. What downstream developers [i]Can[/i] do is patch the code... but any released patches have to also be made available under the GPL and cannot be withheld from upstream. So, any improvements made to the codebase... can legally be merged back into the upstream base. From Bungie and Activision's point of view, they simply place the computational engines under the GPL, assign the code copyrights to themselves... and pretty much job done. An outside shot is that such a setup also means that any engineers who worked on the code while under contract... can revisit the codebase. The only downside would be... the fork. What happens if somebody forks the code. Could they resell the new codebase as a completely new game? Well no, which is where the [i]Secondary[/i] Assets now matter. The [i]Secondary[/i] assets go under a more restrictive license. A license like the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license would create a scenario where downstream fans could modify the art assets... but not actually sell it. Alternatively, the art assets are held under a completely restrictive license. No matter how much work is done on the engines, the player still needs the art assets. The final scenario then is that Bungie and Activision retain control of the Intellectual Property. While the fanbase has the ability to compile and run their own servers... as well as patch the binary executable files used to run the game... as well as the ability to create additional content... the game itself can't actually be resold... and Bungie and Activision can continue to use the I.P. in whatever manner they desire. Course, while such a setup is almost trivial in the PC space... again referencing ID Software... how exactly could such an exit strategy work for a console. Sony and Microsoft probably aren't going to be [i]that[/i] interested in letting players patch the executable files on their hardware platforms. Good question, and is one of the reasons why such exit strategies should probably be planned at the beginning of the game. I can think of a couple ways to address the console versions of [i]Destiny[/i]... but probably the simplest would be to modify the launcher for [i]Destiny[/i] to allow for third party hosts... and only hosts that match the Bungie server signature checksum... can be connected. Not exactly ideal... but again... this is just something to think about now. Besides, what fun would it be if I answered all of the questions ahead of time?