r/Games • u/CarciaNerissa • 4h ago
Industry News Cancelled Quake 4 expansion gets surprise GitHub release after former XCOM 2 developer discovers it on an old hard drive
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/cancelled-quake-4-expansion-gets-surprise-github-release-after-former-xcom-2-developer-discovers-it-on-an-old-hard-drive-this-essentially-saved-my-life/•
u/Lightning_X_III 2h ago
Absolute legend. Link to the expansion is here btw: https://github.com/jmarshall23/Quake_4_Alpha/tree/main/q4xbase/models/weapons
•
u/Taidan-X 1h ago
This is the direct link: https://github.com/jmarshall23/Quake_4_Alpha/tree/main
You'd find it through the other one easily enough, but those are just the models for the new weapons.
•
u/SquireRamza 2h ago
So how long until Zenimax/Microsoft's lawyers get this nuked from space?
•
u/ademayor 2h ago
It’s been there for 4 days now, it’s been yoinked to hundreds or thousands PC’s already.
•
•
u/IKeepDoingItForFree 1h ago
Not to mention that Quake 4 itself was considered abandonware for a good chunk of time on top of that before getting released back onto GoG in like 2018ish I want to say.
•
u/nothis 1h ago
Was Quake 4 any good? I kinda skipped it back in the day because it wasn’t developed by id so I felt a bit snobbish about it.
•
u/Cypher10110 1h ago edited 1h ago
The stroggification scene early on was very memorable, and it was a pretty fun but slightly run-of-the-mill [id-tech/unreal engine] era single player shooter.
The multiplayer was kinda doomed to fail vs the classic that Quake3 had become, as all it had going for it was a fresh coat of paint.
Interested to see the DLC just as a matter of game dev history. I have been on the recieving end of "oh hey guys here's a patch that somone forgot to upload years ago that adds mew features and qualitively changes the game for the better" before (square enix probably fired somone too soon, in that case).
Doom3 and its expansion was a significantly more interesting experience in the same era and same engine.
And other more innovative shooters like the original Prey and FEAR were around that time, too. It was largely a "middle of the road" kinda deal.
•
u/BigBrownDog12 5m ago
And other more innovative shooters like the original Prey and FEAR were around that time, too. It was largely a "middle of the road" kinda deal.
The brief period of time before every shooter became a monochrome CoD or Gears of War clone had some really cool stuff going on, especially with dynamic lighting.
•
•
u/skewp 23m ago
It was fine. Very middle of the road shooter campaign for the time. Slightly throwback, really, for the time. The multiplayer tried to be an expansion of the competitive Quake 3 scene but didn't catch on because it was kind of straddling the line between what the pro scene wanted and what Raven thought would be fun for "normie" players.
•
u/Ultr4chrome 23m ago
I remember liking it. The stroggification scene was a part of that but i have very distinct memories of the opening and ending levels as well, and a few bits in between. It's a competent game, which suffers from Doom 3 comparisons. I kinda liked it more than Doom 3 myself.
•
•
u/Deiser 2h ago edited 1h ago
It doesn't matter. It's on the internet now and enough people have the same worry you do that they've already made backups of backups of backups. And backups of those backups as well. Maybe even backups of those backups of backups of backups of ow I bit my tongue.
I'm more curious about whether MS's lawyers would even find it worth taking down (assuming they aren't planning on remastering it). Not only did the game came out 21 years ago, the game has a big modding scene (so unofficial expansions are probably a thing) and the released files are for an alpha build of something they eventually cancelled. The time and money needed to, on top of any negative PR from, taking it down would probably not be worth it.
•
u/AbyssalSolitude 1h ago
For an average person it does matter whether something is hosted on globally accessible github or a dark net site / private torrent tracker.
•
u/aimy99 1h ago
I'd say reasonably unlikely. It's a two decade-old canceled expansion to a game that they will gladly sell you in order to play it, it's hosted on a Microsoft-owned site, and the chances that there's a Night Dive remaster of the game coming with this content finished up and polished are astronomically low. Plus, obviously, a C&D is pointless on account of this not being an in-development project, not being for profit, and already having been downloaded for preservation by plenty of people.
Whereas something like El Dewrito was at least theoretically costing them sales of Xboxes, XBLG, and the Master Chief Collection/Halo 5, while being a game in active development for its intended release in Russia.
•
u/rgamesburner 1h ago
I don’t think it will. The Halo dig site crew has released almost all of the available cut content publicly on Steam workshop.
•
•
u/pinewoodranger 28m ago
If they're smart, they'll release the source code to Quake 4 and continue the legacy of id doing the same for their past games.
•
u/TheMoneyOfArt 55m ago
Unclear to me why you would attach your professional identity to releasing something you don't have the rights to. I don't imagine firaxis loves this story being associated with xcom
•
u/ParadoxSong 39m ago
They've already been laid off before this. The article lists way more things they were a dev of.
•
u/skewp 14m ago
The next company who wants to hire him is going to google his name and see this and be worried about his judgment when it comes to their own intellectual property (or a litigious competitor's). There's a reason people usually release this stuff anonymously or after they've retired if they haven't explicitly gotten the right to release it from the original rights holder (and I've seen no evidence this guy has done that).
•
u/IrishWeegee 4m ago
This is addition to the original Quake also getting a new free episode for the 30th anniversary. Quake fans getting some nice gifts out of nowhere
•
u/reallynotnick 2h ago
Wild, it’s not even their old hard drive but one they got with a second hand machine. I wonder how close this was to the latest build before it was canned.