Crowdfunding Games Into Freedom

Two games recently started "Kickstarter"-style campaigns on IndieGoGo with part of the offer being "becoming open source":

1. Monster 2, a JRPG which has been open source for a while but then was closed during a upgrade of game data/content, will be released under the Give it Your Own License, License if it reaches its goal of USD 1500,-.
2. Tumblegonk, a yet unreleased simple puzzle game, will be released under GPL if it reaches its goal of USD 850,-.

Is this how open source games should receive at least a bit of funding? I wouldn't mind if some old commercial or freeware titles would do such a step (which can't really be repeated for the same project/game). It's not a sustainable principle of course though.

There are few alternatives of making money with open source game development that comes to mind:

1. Make the engine open source and the game data freeware but sell it on closed platforms, like Frogatto (iOS version is for-pay).
2. Port existing open source games to closed platforms like in the case of Word War Vi (iOS version is for-pay - read the original developers' thoughts on this in this forum post).
3. [Warning: self-promotion] Sell additional, proprietary game data extra, while having the engine and base assets available under free licenses, like Nikki and the Robots (Story Episodes are proprietary and for-pay).
4. Donations. Some open source games accept them. The only game with compelling data on this is FLARE. I don't know of any open source games that fund full-time development through donations.

What I would really love to see is commission-based advertisement-games being developed in JavaScript, with at least their source code being released under open source licenses. But HTML5/JavaScript might not be there yet in the eyes of promoters and in the infrastructure of ad-services...

Oh, and Bitcoin! We need more Bitcoin action! FOSS game developers! Open up a wallet on for example blockchain.info and share your wallet address! As for Flattr... I don't know any more...

There is a long and old discussion about whether it is possible to make money and on TumbleGonk's crowdfunding campagin on our forums.

Get 0.A.D For Free! (Historical RTS Real Time Strategy Role Playing Strategy War Combat Game)

Popular cover boxes for 0 A.D. on eBay

0 A.D. is an epic free and open source real-time strategy game.

Download 0 A.D. For Free Here
Download for Mac OS X and Linux.

You don't have to pay for 0 A.D. These downloads are completely legal.

About this post

As explained in a recent news post by the 0 A.D. team, You Do Not Need to Buy 0 A.D. on eBay.

It would be ideal if the teams behind open source projects would have people working on selling the game in an ethical way that would support their work and the people working on the project.

Ethical would for example mean that it would be clearly stated that the game can be downloaded for free, what kind of physical box to expect (if at all, I remember that SuperTuxKart would often be sold as a "digital download" product) and laying out the distribution of income transparently. This would turn the purchase into a donation (whether that is an acceptable word to describe it needs to be checked with eBay terms) and there are likely to still be buyers that don't have the skills or time to read the text or double-check the freeware status of the game or only look at the screenshots.

Open Source Game Summer Screen Shorts 2012 #2

Haunts: The Manse Macabre is a BSD-code/CC-BY-NC-SA-art Kickstarter-funded, turn-based RPG(?). There are still a few hours left to contribute to additional features.

Sintel: The Game, currently completely CCBY3-licensed, just had their first alpha release! They have original voice acting and all! (Although I did not manage to get it running on Linux yet).

Irrlicht-based cute Puzzle Moppet has been released under the WTFPL and I was able to replace all non-free textures and sounds. Now all we need is a repository coordinator.

Valyria Tear is a continuation of the jRPG Hero of Allacrost project with an active development blog.

Frogatto is a well-designed-code, beautiful-proprietary-pixel-art platformer. The developers started "making friends" on their blog by talking about projects they like.

idTech3 was reviewed in an extensive, illustrated article.

Summoning Wars, a 3d-visuals hack'n'slash needs a new lead developer.

A discussion about OpenGameArt's usability for game developers started on their forums. Improvements were recently added to the texture section and this is a chance to formulate enhancement to the other sections.

Dev Corner: Crowdfunding, OpenGameArt and Kickstarter

Donations: Commercial use of Free Software and Libre Art

Kickstarter for Game Dev
I'm sure you heard the amazing Kickstarter news ;) Dusted, author of Wizznic! shared a short thought about the news I'm actually talking about.

FOSS Games and Donations Now
The FLARE RPG project page now has a PayPal donation button.

0A.D. uses Pledgie for funding.


There is a list of FOSS projects that accept BitCoin here and a more general list here.

OGA and Kickstarter Thoughts
OpenGameArt founder and admin Bart K, shared that he is considering Kickstarter, but could use some more inspiration about what rewards could be given to high pledge-givers.

OGA/CC/FSF Game Dev Contest Plan
There's also a game dev contest in the works, which will be organized this summer by Creative Commons, Free Software Foundation and OpenGameArt. The details are still getting ironed out.

Donations on Free Gamer
By the way: here on FreeGamer, we have Flattr widgets below the posts of the authors who provided their Flattr IDs and other donation methods are available on the about page.


So far no "Donations" page on our wiki, where setting up of PayPal, BitCoin, Flattr and other services is explained for open source game dev projects. There is a rather long thread on the topic of making money with free/FOSS games.


Any donation statistics from open source (game) projects and expertise on the subject are highly welcome in the comments!

HTML5 2D Game/Engine crowdfunding: Time Hammer

When I was looking for last post's link to Justin's portraits, I found a collection of b/w portraits and a new crowdfunding game project: Time Hammer.

Timehammer project introduction video

What is Time Hammer?

1. A game where you run, jump, fall and die, try again, smash enemies, and have fun (hopefully!)  It's a retro, 8-bit throwback to an earlier time, but with some modern touches that we just couldn't help but include.  Low gravity, destructible environments, a kickin chip-tune soundtrack... yeah, it's a blast!
2. A gaming engine built from scratch in HTML5 / Javascript. Time Hammer will be the first fully-featured, plot-driven game featuring the HTML5
3. An indie community dream come true. The game engine will be released open-source on GitHub - meaning that anybody can download it, improve it, and use it for any purpose, free of charge.

"Which license?" was my first thought and question.

I haven't actually researched the nuance of those licenses, and honestly some of the kickstarter money would be used to get a lawyer to recommend one. Two strong contenders are the GPL and MIT license.

Isn't there a group of free software lawyers, who might consult for free beer or less? Supporters can voice their opinion to this topic on the comments page.

Going for USD 8,500

I was reassured, that flash will not be used at all, not even for sound.

FAR Colony Funding & Kambi Engine Donations (Is it possible to make money with open source games?)

The "Is it possible to make money" thread was revived recently. And then two projects I follow announced new funding-'features':

FAR Colony (First Autonomous Remote Colony) is "a game of exploration and space colonization being held in the 23th century". An 8 bit funding page was created [announcement] for it recently. The target is $800 in 109 days. A note at the bottom says:

Of course this project will continue to progress even if my goals aren't reached, it will be more slowly and limited without but will stay alive !

This makes me wonder: how to motivate donations towards open source games (besides making a good game ;) ).

Kambi (VRML) Engine has introduced a fundry.com page for project pledges, feature pledges and donations [announcement]. Fundry.com looks interesting and like an easy way to play the 'donation game', a concept I talked about long ago. Fundry currently accepts paypal only.

The only other open source game project to use fundry.com is the Construct SDK. Fundry has no API yet and writes "Contact us to let us know how you would use it." I think perhaps a Trac integration should be neat..

On a related note: sound specialists can earn $200 on this swamp sound task for Wesnoth.