Considering that afaik they were shipped in Z-code, the game code was already visible to any Z-machine implementation and to whoever wanted to fiddle with raw Z-code.

[–] Vintor@retrolemmy.com 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

They were shipped in z-code, but z-code is basically machine code, and indeed, you can patch any game if you want to fiddle with the binary. The source code is human-readable.

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Not only we had compilers to z-code for a long time, but in fact first third-party languages for the z-machine were better than Infocom's own, which was discovered from their leaked code. So I'd guess reversing the bytecode isn't a problem either for a while now.

[–] Ferk@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Code being visible is not very useful if you can't distribute it, extend it, expand it and improve it.

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What are you gonna be improving in fifty-year-old classics?