Strange that nowhere on this landing page does Mindustry advertise itself as "free software". In fact, there is a very prominent link to buy it on steam for $9.99. A bit off-putting.
As developers of course we associate GitHub with FOSS, but would a layman? I guess the thinking is anyone who doesn't know to visit the repo and `git clone` probably requires the steam installation? $9.99 however is not cheap many places on Earth.
OSS developer finds way to get people to pay for their software, other OSS developers furious. Film at 11.
Like seriously, they made a game and made it open source and free (there's even a prominent $0 itch.io link just under the Steam one!), and allow people to pay them money for it using the most popular and successful game distribution platform in the history of mankind, and people are put off by it?
Am I furious? No. Am I "put off". Yes. And the reason I get put off is that when there is someone or someones involved that has money in focus and are "creative" with securing funding for their work I get worried about possible future decisions and get wary of investing time/effort in the game/software. But that's just me and I know myself, that I get upset when individuals uses their full right to eg close source and start a business based on their successful software. It's not rational but I tend to gravitate to projects driven by very idealistic individuals. Of which there seem to be less and less of as time goes.
I don't disagree, but I'd add that this also pretty normal in modern games. AAA games charging $60 + $1000 in DLC make up a negligible chunk of the games market, yet receive nearly all the coverage, because that price markup is disproportionately directed towards advertising. Here [1] are the sales prices on Factorio by region (another benefit of using a distribution service), and keep in mind that they recently increased their prices by upwards of 50% after leaving early access! The cheapest its available is in Argentina where it goes for $2.80.
It's an identical story with the vast majority of games. For games in a roughly similar vein to Factorio you might also look at Dyson Sphere Program, Rimworld, and Satisfactory among many others. The obscure exceptions in price are AAA stuff and Japanese stuff.
Add in various sales, bundles, etc and it gets even more ridiculous. Epic is currently trying to become a viable competitor to Steam. The problem they face is that people would rather buy games where their games library already is. So Epic has responded perfectly naturally - just give everybody a completely free game library. Each week that give away 1-3 free games to people; that's included games like GTA V.
We're currently in an absolute golden age for games and gaming.
I've seen this pattern before and think it is very interesting. It has the benefit that the people able to contribute get the game for free and the people who cannot contribute have to pay.
It's under the GPL 3 license, so it's free software. Click the GitHub link on top for the source code. It's also free on itch.io. There's a link to that below the Steam link.
I understand that. This is a very highly rated game on Steam. Clearly, many have come across it without realizing it is, in fact, free.
Even as a developer, if Steam were to recommend this game to me, I have no way of knowing it's FOSS. Very interesting strategy. I'll give them that.
I have enough misgivings about it though that I probably won't be playing it. Feels scammy. Like they are trying to essentially release a paid game, but with the support and goodwill of the FOSS community at their disposal.
I certainly hope all of the contributing developers are getting a cut...
I bought it even I know it is. 10$ isn't expensive for that size of a game.
Would you call it a steal if the man maintaining it basically work full time on it and live on it? I think play it for free feels more like a steal instead.
(And technically, this is one man project that accepts contribution, most work are done by himself, includes game mechanism and maps)
The steam one also makes multiplayer much more convenient. Just click on your buddy and join their game. The open source release is a bit trickier and has you hosting and typing in IP addresses.
I'm actually much more likely to buy a game on Steam for $9.99 than for $0. The former game probably costs $9.99, while the latter will either turn out to be a casino in disguise or a second job.
And I'm also extremely wary of any price point below $5. At that level, it's less likely that the game is just cheap, and more likely that it's a barely-playable asset flip. So is $9.99 a fair price for a game that's actually free? Maybe it's a little expensive, but it's not ridiculously so.
Actually, the link in your parent comment is a freely available playable binary. You don't need to build it yourself. The only different with steam version is you need to update it yourself because it does not include an auto updater (Steam one neither, but steam itself is).
The only platform you need to pay to play is ios. Because… Apple tex. You need an expensive mac and yearly paid dev account just to submit anything to appstore. It's not reasonable to ask anyone do it for free (let alone time consumed on maintenance)
As developers of course we associate GitHub with FOSS, but would a layman? I guess the thinking is anyone who doesn't know to visit the repo and `git clone` probably requires the steam installation? $9.99 however is not cheap many places on Earth.