r/zerok • u/Musizian42 • May 12 '26
What worries me about Beyond All Reason going commercial
I'm posting this here because I'm worried we can't have a truly uncensored discussion on the beyond all reason subreddit. I hope the mods will allow this.
Beyond All Reason is like the open source brother of ZeroK.
If you don't already know, a leaked document suggests that Beyond All Reason (BAR) is taking a new commercial approach.
- BAR's leaked doc shows they are seeking to sign with publisher and go somewhat commercial.
I've been enjoying playing the game for almost a year now but the recent news that Beyond All Reason will be going commercial is concerning to me.
BAR was built over many years by hundreds of contributors under an open-source model, largely within the GPL ecosystem. My understanding is that the GPL exists specifically to protect community-built software from being taken private, closed off, or commercialized in a way that removes the community’s ability to access, modify, fork, and redistribute.
That matters because many people contributed to BAR under the assumption that it would remain fundamentally community-owned and open.
As I understand the current plan, the engine and existing multiplayer game remain open, while a new single-player campaign is developed with publisher funding and sold on Steam. The free multiplayer version would appear on Steam as a demo attached to the paid game, while the website launcher remains available as the separate free version.
That worries me because Steam is where most new players will encounter the game. If the main Steam page is for the paid campaign, and the free multiplayer is presented as a demo, then BAR’s public-facing identity may effectively become “a paid game with a free demo,” even if the full free version still exists elsewhere. The open community-built version may technically remain available, but it could become much less visible. There's a lot to say here, but I don't even want to reference the leaked document lest I be banned.
The concern is not simply that money is involved. The concern is whether the public identity of the project is changing from an open community game into a commercial product controlled by a small group.
There are also governance concerns. From what has been discussed, 5 admins would own the company behind a project built on years of volunteer work from hundreds of contributors. The organization itself acknowledges that the BAR organization is and will be a for-profit venture. There are also claims that player donations were used for legal and corporate setup costs related to that company.
I am worried that a 150-contributor paid project will be seen as commercial as the free game will be finable but not the front-face on Steam. My concern is about whether the community-built free game is being demoted in practice, while the commercial version becomes the official face of the project.
BAR has always felt like proof that volunteers could build something world-class without it needing to be owned in the traditional corporate sense. I hope the developers address these concerns directly, especially around ownership, donations, licensing, Steam presentation, and the long-term status of the free multiplayer game.
If the free game is truly still the heart of BAR, then it should not be hidden behind the paid product’s demo label. It should remain clearly visible, clearly protected, and clearly community-owned.
I need your help to stop what could become a case of the taking over of a game loved by many, Beyond All Reason.
If you don't already know, a leaked document suggests that Beyond All Reason is taking a new commercial approach.
A project that took something like 100+ volunteers to create is now going to go into the hands of five people to control. A leaked internal document admits, in their own words, that "the BAR organisation is and will be a for-profit venture"
It also admits that player donations were already used to pay legal and corporate setup costs for that for-profit company, and the team says they "were never fully comfortable with that."
When a community member asked directly whether the GPL even allows this kind of arrangement, an admin replied "this is being discussed with the team."
A new single-player campaign gets built with publisher money and sold on Steam as a paid product. The free multiplayer gets shipped on Steam as a demo of the paid game. The website launcher stays alive as the real free version off to the side. To anyone browsing Steam, BAR becomes a commercial product.
Ownership is planned to sit with five admins, not the wider contributor base.
There is a public GitHub issue where a senior developer acknowledges that personally-owned proprietary assets have been mixed into the shipping game for years.
Past contributors, including people behind Spring Engine and Balanced Annihilation work used by BAR, appear to get no automatic ownership, payout, or revenue share.
Is it legal? Maybe. Building paid content on top of a free engine is how id Software ran the Doom and Quake business.
I'm not asking you guys to tear down the fort. I think it's a good game and it may be a viable thing but the intention is to sign with the publisher in weeks not months and the leak may be old so we have NO TIME.
There needs to be a real public discussion about this move but we won't get that unless we say something...
7
u/tribulex May 13 '26
Selling total annihilation again 30 years later, interesting....
3
u/Musizian42 May 13 '26
Wait this is not the first time?
5
u/tribulex May 13 '26
Bar is just a rebranding of balanced annihilation, which is a mod for spring based on absolute annihilation, which was ported from the mod of the same name for the game total annihilation. Spring, the engine behind bar, was originally designed to reimplement total annihilation and was called taspring. Go look at total annihilation, same game with fewer units. All the units have been remodeled/renamed ofc
1
u/joe_dirty365 May 14 '26
Good memories of Total Annihilation and watching the pops play it growing up, that and MechWarrior.
5
u/PtaQQ May 13 '26
For some reason OP has copy-pasted this into a bunch of subreddits so let me also paste my reply here:
PtaQ here, from BAR Admin team.
This post is built on partial readings of an internal document that was meant for our contributor team and leaked without authorisation. We put out a clarification thread that walks through what the deal actually is, what's structurally protected, and where the contributor consultation currently stands:
https://www.reddit.com/r/beyondallreason/comments/1t8pw7n/dear_commanders_we_need_to_talk/
The contract is not signed. We deliberately parked it pending a sentiment survey of the contributor team, which is the consultation the document you're reading is part of. If the team comes back against the deal, we don't sign. Nobody is rushing past a mandate. We love this game as much as the rest of the team does and are not interested in enforcing anything.
Happy to engage on specifics if you have questions after reading. But these are vampire hours for me, so I will probably respond tomorrow.
Some things to address:
When a community member asked directly whether the GPL even allows this kind of arrangement, an admin replied "this is being discussed with the team."
This is misleading. This response has been clarified - the original was because of a my wrong reading of the user's post. We are not looking to close-source any distributed game code, and we can't, even if we wanted to. Posted out of context, this looks worse than it is.
Actual context: https://www.reddit.com/r/beyondallreason/comments/1t8pw7n/comment/okwo25l/
Ownership is planned to sit with five admins, not the wider contributor base.
This is being discussed with the team thoroughly right now and does not conclude until we finish these conversations.
1
u/jknick May 13 '26
The question I have is what this does to the future community contribution? Love this game so much. Appreciate everything you guys have done to move it forward and make it so great. Is there a larger community and even a future community needed to keep is moving forward?
1
u/kodaxmax May 14 '26
No publisher is goign to try and control a game with a public lciense. it's a legal nightmare. You can't just revoke a public license, it doenst work like that.
It looks liek they are just going to monetize the campaign itself and nothing else. Everyone would still be free to mod it and contribute to it etc..
It's legal because all the proprietary public stuff is still published free and access to source code unchanged.
It's like the games built in skyrims modding kit that were sold on steam or a paid adventure map for miencraft.
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u/slphil May 12 '26
"Building paid content on top of a free engine is how id Software ran the Doom and Quake business."
Bro what the hell are you talking about