Agree with him. I very much enjoy fangames, but sorry guys, I find this pretentious and hypocritical. You all get up in arms when nintendo sends C&D to fangames. Total nonsense.
About the assets, I have no objection. However, we have some points to consider:
- Although the assets belong to the IP owner, the code is not. Using my SORX as an example, I'm not using even a single line of the SoR game codes. So in theory, creators can even leave all the assets accessible, but they could lock the codes.
- I don't see the "kill the scene" point because fan games are done with many different engines, and curiously most of them have their content locked not with a security method properly but just as a consequence of how the engine compiles the content.
We can see some examples with Sonic 2 HD or Sonic SMS Remake series, which the author developed using other engines (I don't recall if it was made with Unity or Godot) and there's no asset accessible.
Another example is with SORR too, where only recently the assets were decrypted. In both cases people didn't say a single word about it, they just enjoyed the game.
So, if these (and countless others) cases didn't kill the fan game scene, obviously secured content in OpenBOR will not do it.
- And my last point is about devs that want to create games with 100% original assets but don't use OpenBOR due to no security method available. So, having a way to secure content is a big step forward for the engine and will attract many new developers.
But if the "scene" refers to allowing any OpenBOR game degradation due to countless modifications by the second/third tiers like DC explained, I think this is not a "healthy" behaviour for the community in the long term and IMO perhaps it should not be encouraged.