fr1tz {l Wrote}:Even if the game would appeal to a broad playerbase and I had the relevant connections in the "industry" to get some press for it, there's no way a piece of open-source software could sell enough units to even cover the cost of promotion, let alone production. IMO the kind of people nice enough to pay for open-source software would also (and perhaps rather) donate to its development. There have been plenty of business models around open-source software, but as far as I know none of them survived.
I don't agree, look at Tales of Maj'Eyal: the code is 100% GPLv3, and only the tileset is nonfree (but freely redistributable with the game). You can download the game for free on its official website, it's included in some Linux distributions.
And still, I'm sure it sells pretty well on Steam. And it's simple:
- The userbase is HUGE on Steam, so you get 100x more than when doing promotion by yourself.
- It's so easy to buy things on Steam that people actually do it, even if they could get the game for free otherwise. Of course if you try to sell it for $50 and it can be obtained for free on your website, it might not work, but $5 to $10 might work.
- Steam users like to have games on Steam, I know it from experience. Even if I do value DRM-free downloads, I've played all my games through Steam even when I had them in DRM-free version too. Partly because of the additional features that Steam integration might bring (especially useful for multiplayer games), but probably for the "social media" component. When I play a good game, I like it that my contacts know about it, see my recommendation, etc.. All this to say that people might buy TOL on Steam just because they want to have it in their Steam library and play it from Steam.
Edit: And the cost of promotion when going through Steam Greenlight is really low. At first it was open to anyone, but IIRC to prevent getting too much spam they now ask to pay $100 to submit your game:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/219820/