FOSS games you can "buy"

[KIAaze]

Yesterday, I discovered that the FOSS game Tales of Maj'Eyal was being sold on Desura: http://www.desura.com/games/tales-of-majeyal
This is official as confirmed on their website: http://www.te4.org/blogs/darkgod/2013/0 ... yal-desura
(Note also that they are part of a small number of FOSS games attempting to get onto Steam: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3938&hilit=nikki )

I added it to the list of donation-accepting games on the wiki.

Nikki and the robots is another such game.

Do any of you know of more games trying this?

I think it would be interesting and useful to compile such a list (or simply extend the previously mentioned wiki table).

[qubodup]

TOME is non-free art wise unfortunately.

Naev is another one trying to get on Steam:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... d=93971156

[KIAaze]

Ok, I see I missed the "and assets" part in the wiki. Sorry. (although the TOME4 page also doesn't even mention the asset licenses)

So what about adding a table of games/engines with FOSS code, but not assets?

Could digitanks go in there?: https://github.com/BSVino/Digitanks
From a quick look, it looks like the BSD license only covers the code. Some of the fonts seem to be covered by this license: http://typodermicfonts.com/license/

I'm attaching the

credits.txt

(1.89 KiB) Downloaded 1376 times

from the full game, which seems to be the only file in there related to licensing.

[Evropi]

Crystal Space made an announcement regarding such a thing today. MIT code, open art (no license specified).

[devnewton]

Paying mods will be soon available for Newton Adventure.

If you cant wait, I also accept donation: http://devnewton.bci.im/projects/newton ... e=Donation

[KIAaze]

2 more:
-The castle doctrine (public domain source code)(not sure about assets)
-Ryzom: game code licenses: code: GNU/AGPLv3, assets: CC-BY-SA (subscription based payment)

Actually, maybe all of Jason Roher's games are available for sale and with public domain source code. Haven't checked yet. But there's his comment on Rock-Paper-Shotgun:

Jason Rohrer says:

Everything I do is placed in the public domain. No restrictions, no need to license anything. Do what you want with it (including making mods or whatever).

edit: Yup, all public domain.
http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason ... MyWork.php

[Julius]

About Ryzom, AFAIK the sounds & music are not CC-By-SA.

[Evropi]

About Ryzom, AFAIK the sounds & music are not CC-By-SA.

Hmm? Thought it was just the story and various player-facing scripts, do you have a source for this?

The Ryzom website is a bit of a mess really.

[charlie]

-The castle doctrine (public domain source code)

edit: Yup, all public domain.
http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason ... MyWork.php

Not to come across as facetious... but... Rohrer's model works because his games are basically pretty dour things. Nobody would want to take his work and re-brand or re-market it.

Those that do buy it are likely not particularly ... not sure of the anti-word; some kind of new age technologists. They won't care for the source, but will like the fact they get it. They buy it more for art and to support Rohrer than anything else. Certainly nobody "main stream" would go for these art "games".

In case you couldn't tell, I'm not a big fan of his work. (Not to say I don't approve of his effort though, I just think there are worthier free game projects out there but he seems to get a lot of attention because he was once featured in a newspaper.)

[qubodup]

I don't consider "you have to buy it to get it" a form of donation, as long as it's not made clear to the buyer where and how you can get the same thing for free (which would defeat the purpose). Donations are donations when they are clearly marked as "donations".

EDIT: There might be sense to consider a "monetized open source games" list.

I recommend not to bother with creating lists of games that are non-free in any of the possible aspects. It will lead to endless discussions about whether Quake 3 is an open source game (spoiler: no) etc.

For the curious: Jason's project sources are located at http://hcsoftware.hg.sourceforge.net/hgweb/hcsoftware/

[Julius]

About Ryzom, AFAIK the sounds & music are not CC-By-SA.

Hmm? Thought it was just the story and various player-facing scripts, do you have a source for this?

The Ryzom website is a bit of a mess really.

Okay, so what are you not releasing?

Ryzom has cleaned the source code of internal documentation, personal information and passwords. The audio assets will also not be released at this time as Ryzom has not determined the copyright nature of those assets. We are also not releasing the internal Ryzom level design files so that we do not harm the integrity of the game and story line.

From: http://dev.ryzom.com/projects/ryzom/wiki/OpenSourceFAQ

[Julius]

With more and more open-source games showing up on platforms like Steam and Desura, I would like to bump this discussion.

Lately I have come to the conclusion that even if you are not actually planning to make money of your game you should still charge a small sum ($5?) when offering your game on such platforms. You can still make it available freely through your website or repositories, but I STRONGLY suggest you don't do it on those mass public distribution channels.

My reasons for that:

1. Psychology: if something is free it is "worth nothing", and open-source is neither understood by most people nor well featured in those distribution channels
2. If you game is free it will be lumped together with other "free to play" games that are mostly crappy P2W ripoff games and the entire section is skipped entirely by what is your most likely intended target audience (people that play F2P titles will likely not care about FOSS)
3. It shows other indie developers that they don't have to keep their source closed

You can always donate the money made to a good cause like the FSF or whatever!