Making free games and profiting on it?

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 12:04:44PM +0200, Giel van Schijndel wrote:
> On 14-08-17 10:18, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
> > Coming from a background in computer games, I was thinking really much
> > about how to create free games and make money on it - to make it into
> > a profession. First I thought about if the game is free software then
> > it will no longer be a "commodity" in the same sense as todays games
> > where you basically buy a license to be permitted to install the
> > executables and artwork on your computer.
> >
> > So what can be sold then, if the free software game isn't sellable in
> > the same sense?

> I wonder if paying for development with a crowd funding approach would
> be a viable model here. I have seen some instances where it was used for
> non-game free software. I.e. you ask for money for the investment that
> you're making: time. To abuse a popular acronym and make it better
> SDaaS: Software Development as a Service.

I stumbled in the past on people doing that kind of things on
Patreon... a non-free webservice, in that the software that runs the
website and platform is not free software available to its users in
the AGPL meaning...

Some games on Patreon like that are pretty much closed-source (and
distributed as binaries), some are in Python done with Renpy (and
inherently the source is disclosed).

-- 
Lionel