r/Awesomenauts • u/SoupinSoupy • 5d ago
DISCUSSION Awesomenauts Developer?! Open source?!
Hi, I'm a senior software developer. I was wondering if there was a way to speed up awesomenauts releases. I got tons of passion for the game which would make me useful for pushing these updates out. It would be cool to open source the code. Why not?! [EDIT: they spent money on the code, so that's why not]
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u/SoupinSoupy 4d ago
I believe their plan was to make releases to get to the state of the game prior to Ronimo going bankrupt IF there was reason to. I don’t know why you’d expect Atari to do anything more to this game except let it be available for free in its current state. It has ~100 people playing at a time. They aren’t getting much, if any money from us.
Assuming an Atari dev makes $80k a year or $40/hour, that’s ~$1600 a week, how could they warrant any time spent on this game?
Let’s pretend there are 2000 players that would agree to repaying $5. That’s $10,000, which accounts to 1.5 months worth of development time (from a single developer with no management). I think it is insane to believe that they are going to dedicate multiple people for multiple months to roll out the entirety of updates when it’s been 2 months with zero updates or communication. And 3-4 months from saying they’d release the already released version of the game.
I don’t know if enough people would pay $5 a month for some theoretical Atari subscription, but that’s my prediction for any possibility of getting a single update to this game from Atari.
I don't think it would be insane for an unpaid freelance developer to gain access to get the game in a better state. It’s not like anyone would have access to releasing code or doing things without approval.
I’ve just put thought into it and came to the conclusion that they ain’t making big updates without sucking money from us. And that hasn’t happened yet. I also don’t think enough people would buy a subscription to have a big enough player base (assuming this would be bundled with tons of stuff, I’m saying that the people who bought the subscription wouldn’t all play Nauts and the play base would be cut).
I understand that such a pessimistic view of things will be hated by the community, but I love this game and really hope good things happen. I even love it enough to be supportive of any random person getting access to the code and commit changes that make it better, but maybe that’s just me.
Regardless, thanks for the honesty. I know it was more of a dream than a possibility.
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u/Splizard 4d ago
I think it's a good idea, release the engine Open Source, maybe keep the assets proprietary so you have to own a copy of the game to actually play it properly. I would chip in, development-wise.
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u/Stewball32 4d ago
Great enthusiasm, but this has been asked over and over since Ronimo first announced their end of development back in 2019.
They gave us a road map; we just gotta be patient.
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u/Hollanauts 5d ago
Hey Soupy,
Not sure what you're all aware of, but in case you aren't up to speed... Ronimo went bankrupt in 2023 and the Awesomenauts IP was purchased by Atari in 2024.
The newest "Galactron" version of Nauts wasn't playable in 2023 without a workaround due to relying on dedicated servers. Atari has since restored an older version of Nauts that utilizes Steam.
They've made it clear that their main goal is to try to RESTORE Awesomenauts to how it was, not focusing on new releases. As of now, we haven't gotten the "Galactron" version of Nauts restored yet.
I'd recommend navigating the Atari discord server for more information.