Are video game developers even able to keep source code?

Of course they can, but nobody gave a shit about digital preservation until somewhat recently.

>>713150138 (OP)
id software
*drops mic*

>>713150138 (OP)
Square is famously retarded about this stuff.

>>713150138 (OP)
same shit as ff8 and 7, there's a reason we didnt get remasters of them for a long time

>>713150138 (OP)
>"It just wasn't done at the time!"
>literally everyone else at the time did it
>the concept of a master copy is something that has been around for even longer than videogames
has square always been managed by retards? its a surprise they made so much good stuff once upon a time

>>713150138 (OP)
What about Tactics advance?

Entirely depends on the developer. But it did come to light some years ago that Nintendo vaults a shitload of things, including code for some third-party games on their hardware.

>>713150138 (OP)
No wonder what it looks like crap, it's just AI upscaled textures

How did they do War of the Lions, that came out in 2007

>>713151017
*Until remasters proved to be lucrative

>>713150138 (OP)
>>713152865
it's specifically a japanese dev issue

>>713153654
definitely completely gone

The Japanese have retard level ideals when it comes to archiving things. Like it only recently became a thing that some do it, but they even have laws that limit what and how so what is being archived is mostly useless.

probably at least half these JP devs just say "shit's lost" because it's more convenient than tracking back their old employees, travelling to their ancestral homes, and then turning it topside for a handful of discs
they undoubtedly must have took work home back when vidya was still built on passion

>>713152865
they literally made versions of windows 8 on floppy disks for the japs, aint no way were they making secure backups of source code in the 90s

>>713150138 (OP)
final fantasy 7
final fantasy 9
final fantasy tactics

source code lost forever in all of them. That pretty much amounts to saying that all their games source code got lost forever. if they could not safeguard those games imagine the rest.

>>713150138 (OP)
it's literally only Square
they didnt save really any of their shit besides some random stuff here and there as a fluke

>>713152865
Japs were never known for their decision making skills.

>>713153654
they immediately deleted the source code after the game launched

There exist multiple archived and functional versions of source code for Mario and Zelda on the N64, both official and fan produced, capable of recreating the games to a bit accurate level. We can be thankful for this fortuitous state of affairs, that the actually greatest and more important games are fully preserved and rebuildable, which matters far more than having the source files for a bunch of random JRPGs that their fans swear "actually have deep gameplay this time, I promise".

>>713150138 (OP)
Nintendo keeps the source code for their games, examples are Nintendo giving Square Enix the source code for Seiken Densetsu 3 for the re-release and Ocarina of Time 3d being rebuilt from the source code.
Most Japanese companies at the time destroyed their source code because they put way too much value in that code and didn't want other studios to steal it and use it to figure out how to do what they did.
In the US it really depended, big publishers often had devs delete their source code because the publishers really had no idea what the fuck was even going on so stuff like Fallout is lost, but for smaller studios like say ID, they just released the source code for their games, thanks to having programmers in the management process.