Tbh I think engineers gladly would. I think most folks want the content out. It’s the legal obligations that always get in the way.

I dunno, is it that special?

Take I’d for example. They released source code for genre defining extremely popular games and were fine.

And how often is code reused anyway? Every online game seem to either use mostly stock server code that comes with the engine or build anew every time.

Most sauce code is actually banal and boring no matter what the company executives tell themselves about their proprietary dung pile.