Amnesia: The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs are now open source

(Image credit: Frictional Games)

Frictional Games has decided to celebrate ten years of Amnesia scaring the crap out of people by letting everyone craft their own horrifying nightmares. From today, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs are open source.

Released under the GNU General Public License, anyone can tinker away with the game code and editor code for both games, mod it, create something new and even release software built on it commercially—though the terms of the license mean that you'd also have to make it open source as well.

"Modding has been a huge part of Amnesia," says Thomas Grip, Frictional Games' creative director. "For instance, over the years The Dark Descent has accumulated over 1,000 mods and addons on ModDB [1,056, to be exact]. This flood of user content has been amazing to see, and we are extremely grateful for the whole community. It is time we give something back."

Frictional still owns the games and will continue to sell them, but you can do what you like with the source code, as long as you don't breach the GPL v3 license. There are some caveats and rules about what you have to do if you choose to distribute anything built with GPL code.

If you fancy rooting around in the code, here's The Dark Descent, and here's A Machine for Pigs.

A couple of weeks ago, Frictional gave us a glimpse of The Dark Descent's cutting room floor, showing off concept art for horrible plant-human hybrids and environments that never made it into the final game, along with dropped ideas like giving players a flintlock pistol and introducing other historical figures like the Count of St. Germain and, unexpectedly, Jesus. Maybe somebody will feel inspired to bring this version to life.

Amnesia: Rebirth is also coming soon. It's the third game in the series and the second to be developed by Frictional, but it kicks things forward a century and will be dumping us in the Algerian desert as a stranded amnesiac, Tasi Trianon, who's being stalked by several creatures. It's coming on October 20, just in time for Halloween.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.