Take a game like Star Wars Galaxies, for instance. Sony didn't own the rights to Star Wars; it was licensing them. When it shut down the game, turning the code over to the public would have been a violation of their license and would have gotten them sued.
Now let's take an example of a game based on original IP. Even then, the publisher presumably wants to maintain its control over that IP. It wants to preserve the option to sell new iterations on that IP at some point in the future.
Even in the case of a publisher's going bankrupt or shutting down, it will attempt to liquidate its assets (IP being a key asset) in order to pay off its creditors. (For example: this is how the Terminator franchise keeps surviving in various iterations, despite the bankruptcy of its original IP holder. The rights were auctioned off at fire sale prices, rather than simply committed to the public domain.)
Intellectual property is the entire basis of the entertainment industry, be it movies or games. It is, accordingly, very fiercely guarded.
[Note: this is not a comment about the ethics or the morals of IP, nor a comment on what game companies should do. It is merely an observation.]
I wonder if some kind of trust arrangement in the original IP license could accommodate this.
ie: At the end of this licensure period, $publisher may make technical game material available for use. These materials do not extend a license etc etc. $publisher may not charge for, etc etc.
Most of the time, these old games will have small user bases, and if not, the licensor should be able to exploit that in some way.
It's an interesting thought. And I've actually seen games in the wild where something kinda-sorta like this seems to have happened. Not, MMOs. But in some cases old PC or Mac games, now being rereleased, decades later, as nostalgia plays. In cases where there was an IP license involved in the original game, the rereleases are sometimes (but rarely) genericized. Your hypothetical Chewbacca the Wookiee becomes Grordor the Tree Troll, and his Chewbacca sprite is replaced by a bit-riddled rendition of an orangutan with a crossbow. Or what have you.
Of course, every license is slightly to significantly different from the rest. So no telling which games involved more liberal or more restrictive terms within their original agreements.
I've been thinking about this before, but more in the sense of ever-increasing copy protection: I would propose that, in order to qualify for extended-term copyright, an unencumbered version is put in escrow, outside of the copyright owner's control. This would then ensure that when the copyright term is over, the work is still available and in a suitable format for adaptation.
Not sure how that would translate to MMO games though... should we put only the code and design in escrow, or also (parts of) the generated worlds? Player characters? Design tools?
Take a game like Star Wars Galaxies, for instance. Sony didn't own the rights to Star Wars; it was licensing them. When it shut down the game, turning the code over to the public would have been a violation of their license and would have gotten them sued.
Now let's take an example of a game based on original IP. Even then, the publisher presumably wants to maintain its control over that IP. It wants to preserve the option to sell new iterations on that IP at some point in the future.
Even in the case of a publisher's going bankrupt or shutting down, it will attempt to liquidate its assets (IP being a key asset) in order to pay off its creditors. (For example: this is how the Terminator franchise keeps surviving in various iterations, despite the bankruptcy of its original IP holder. The rights were auctioned off at fire sale prices, rather than simply committed to the public domain.)
Intellectual property is the entire basis of the entertainment industry, be it movies or games. It is, accordingly, very fiercely guarded.
[Note: this is not a comment about the ethics or the morals of IP, nor a comment on what game companies should do. It is merely an observation.]