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.
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?
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.
On the other hand, it is very programmer-elitist.
If you don't want to pay now(for whatever reason) but want to play it. You just do. (And I highly suggest you do it if you haven't)
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...
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)
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.
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)