Frictional Games has decided to allow anyone to create horrific nightmares to commemorate the 10 years since Amnesia first terrified people. Starting today, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs will be released as open source.

Released under the GNU General Public License, anyone can tinker with and modify the game and editor code of both games, create new ones, and commercially release software based on them . [Thomas Gripp, creative director of Friction Games, said, "Moding has played a huge role in 'Amnesia. For example, 'The Dark Descent' has accumulated over 1,000 mods and add-ons in the ModDB over the years (1,056 to be exact). This flood of user content has been spectacular and we are extremely grateful to the entire community. Now is the time for us to give something back." [But you can do what you want with the source code as long as you don't violate the GPL v3 license; if you choose to distribute something built with GPL code, there are some caveats and rules about what you must do.

If you are interested in the code, please read The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs.

A few weeks ago, Friction gave us a glimpse of the cutting room floor for The Dark Descent and showed off some terrifying plant/human hybrids and environmental concept art that did not make it into the final game. Perhaps someone will want to bring a version of this to the world.

Amnesia: Rebirth is also coming soon. It is the third in the series and the second developed by Friction, but things have been moved forward a century and you are thrown out into the Algerian desert as Tashi Trianon, an amnesiac who is stalked by multiple creatures. It will be released on October 20, just in time for Halloween.