628
Let’s make games open source, so future generations can enjoy them
(jairajdevadiga.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
628 points (98.5% liked)
Open Source
31358 readers
295 users here now
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Useful Links
- Open Source Initiative
- Free Software Foundation
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Software Freedom Conservancy
- It's FOSS
- Android FOSS Apps Megathread
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
- !libre_culture@lemmy.ml
- !libre_software@lemmy.ml
- !libre_hardware@lemmy.ml
- !linux@lemmy.ml
- !technology@lemmy.ml
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Be the change you want to see. Make some games worth playing and release it as a FOSS and prove it can be a commercial success as well. See how it goes.
Asking people to release their work for free while providing very little incentives other than your own benefit aren't going to convince people who need to put food on the table NOW, without relying on miniscule probability of popularity or success after pouring years of your time.
Shoutout to Frictional Games (known for Penumbra, Amnesia, Soma) who publish many of their older (commercially successfully) games on their GitHub: https://github.com/FrictionalGames
Great that they're using the GPLv3 license too.
Sidebar: that's why the Penumbra games have excellent VR support now, for those interested in shitting their pants.
Well, one of the alternatives is what ID Software used to do, where they would sell the game for a period of time and then open source the code Once sales dropped off.
Yee, you're mot going to be hurt by open sourcing your game 5 or 10 years later. By that time practically nobody will buy your game anymore. And of the ones who still will,.they likely aren't the ones that would even bother with looking for alternatives other than a big sale on a store page
But then, open sourcing adds to human culture, it lets others modify the game, or use it as a foundation for something new. And those things will credit you, and you will still get some extra benefit/good pr.
It's just a good thing to do, imo.
I have mentioned examples of games that saw commercial success while being open source. And of course, delayed open source is also an option as some other users have said here.