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Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

I find the new trend interesting, to sell the game on Steam, but have a link to Github with the actual source. So free for developers and people who care to find out. Thats fair, I think, but I would prefer if the direct donation model would be more established among the masses.

But this link points to the general site, with lots of options and also directly the free version. Kudos. Will try it out later.

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It’s because it’s sold on Steam mostly for the features that directly integrate with Steam (like joining friend’s games). If you don’t care about that, the game is free :)

That's not because you didn't know about it that it is a "new trend"

https://github.com/Poussinou/FLOSS-Games-on-Steam

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38475471-Libre-Open-S...

It's nothing new, and also exist in the tooling side of things

https://store.steampowered.com/app/431730/Aseprite/ - https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite

Aseprite isn't open source.

What are you talking about? The parent comment literally linked the GitHub repo with the Aseprite source.

But that repository doesn't have any FOSS license. Only I can find is "EULA.txt" which contains stuff like:

> (c) Prohibition on Reverse Engineering, Decompilation, and Disassembly. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation.

And more. Doesn't seem FOSS, more like "readable source" or similar.

They switched from GPL in 2016: https://dev.aseprite.org/2016/09/01/new-source-code-license/

Shapez.io does the same thing - and not having to figure out another JavaScript build process in my spare time was easily worth ten bucks.

I noticed e.g. Cyberduck do the same. It's open source software, you can download it on the website for free. But if you want to have it one click on the App store it's $24.

That is actually fair idea. I am going to try it with an Android app - paid in G Play Store, free in FDroid.

DAVx⁵ operates under the same principle and they seem to have success with it.

https://www.davx5.com/

wow, thanks for that, i didn't know you could build it yourself. I have a nextcloud and was irked that i had to shell out cash for something i had considered non-essential, syncing calendars.

Now i am going to try it out for free and buy it if it works without issue, awesome.

It's available on F-Droid. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/at.bitfire.davdroid/

as does OSMAnd

Plus developers who want the steam version or just want to support the makers.

Aseprite (pixel art editor) has this sort of “if you can build it you can have it” arrangement.

I wonder what percentage of would-be-paying users are getting it for free. I guess it’s probably significant but still nothing close to a majority.

It might have been free on Play Store a few years ago when I tried it, maybe just very cheap. I was looking for a fun game on my Amazon tablet after installing Play Store, and Mindustry delivered.

Buying on steam is a donation basically? Why is it not?

Because of the cut steam takes I guess. And fixed price, and a middleman, and depends on a central platform, etc

available (nearly) anywhere, built in support forums, refund capability, and until a couple of years ago being able to use bitcoin to pay (buy steam gift cards with bitcoin). family sharing - where another computer can play games you've bought if it's on the same network, is also a nice feature. I know it doesn't matter here because the game is open source (or whatever), but in the general sense it's reduced my spending on games. When my kid wants to play a steam game i either do work or play a game on xbox for windows, gog, battlenet, whatever. As i type he's playing BeamNG on his computer via my steam login on my computer.

Also, i am a bit biased. I'm part of the steam class action, and potentially will receive $500 or more from valve due to their "cut".

Damn, this is the first I've read about the steam class action. Did you just sign up via one of the firms advertising online?

The first one I found wants a 40% cut of any settlement. I have no basis to know if that's reasonable or not - on its face it doesn't seem crazy, and 60% of something is still more than nothing, but I can't help but wonder if there's a better deal out there. How are you being represented in the class action suit?

I got an email about it earlier this year from some law firm. I'm not sure what their cut is, but that amount was my "cut" of what they would attempt to recover before "needing" to go to arbitration. You had to have spent money on the steam platform between june of 2016 and january of 2022 (iirc); i don't know if there was a dollar amount trigger in involvement.

Mindustry has other ways to donate directly if you choose. The dev obviously thinks paying steam a cut is still worth it in increased sales and marketing.

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