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[MadWatch]

Like many of you I'm developing a game as a hobby. It eats most of my free time but it's still a hobby.

I'm not trying to make money out of it, neither to break into the game industry and I'm not feeling like creating a company. Therefore I'm considering making my game open source, putting the code under GPL and the art under Creative Common or something similar. The artist and the game designer I work with are fine with that too.

But one question remains. If I give my game for free then how can I distribute it ? Is it possible to publish a free game on some major game distribution plateformes like Steam ? Or will it be limited to the open source only distribution plateformes ?

Thanks in advance for your advises.

[Chris Koźmik]

You don't need to make your game open source. You can simply distribute the executable as freeware while retaining almost all rights to it (for example if one day you change your mind and decide to make Deluxe paid verion ).

Desura accepts free games. Steam, I'm almost sure, not (except if you make it free to play with microtransations, but that's not strictly freeware).

[MadWatch]

Thank you Archibald.

I couldn't find any official confirmation but it seems you're right. Steam don't care about totally free games 

[Dacke]

You don't need to make your game open source.

If you plan to give the game away for free, why wouldn't you do it properly? I think that it's a great initiative to make your game open source, rather than freeware. It benefits both fans and developers, who can help patch the game or build new things from it. You still retain the right to do anything you want with it; including creating future, non-free versions of it.

As for the actual question: If your game runs on Linux, you will be able to distribute it as an official package for different Linux distributions. There are already many games available on the official Debian servers (both good and very bad games). If your game gets accepted there (which shouldn't be that hard) it will automatically be available in the Ubuntu Software Center (USF). Once there it is one-click-away for everyone using Ubuntu/Kubuntu/LinuxMint/etc.. If your game gets good ratings in the USF it will likely become promoted as "recommended software", which will expose it to millions of users.

edit: A tip for the open source release: upload it to github. That way it will be super-easy for others to submit patches, report problems and create forks. It will also be a nice feather in you cap.

[nico]

If you plan to give the game away for free, why wouldn't you do it properly? I think that it's a great initiative to make your game open source, rather than freeware. It benefits both fans and developers, who can help patch the game or build new things from it. You still retain the right to do anything you want with it; including creating future, non-free versions of it.

While I absolutely agree with this, there is a small caveat to what you're say here:

If you create an open product and accept patches for it, you can't automatically take those patches (or the finished derived work) and create it back into a closed source project. Submitters still retain the copyright to their submissions. Though of course, if they're your fans and agree with what you're doing, getting their permission to use their stuff in a commercial project probably won't be too hard.

[Dacke]

Yes, sure, if you accept code from others you have to respect the license they have put on their code. If people provide you with GPL-licensed work (patches/libraries) you can't use that in a non-free release. But it is possible to have people sign over the rights to their work to you (so you can release it under both GPL and non-free licenses). Or have people submit their patches under a permissive license (like CreativeCommons-Attribution) that allow you to relicense the patches under some other license (either GPL or non-free).

As long as you make sure to communicate your intentions and needs to people before they submit their code, you should be fine.

Making an open source release only gives you more options. You wouldn't get those patches in the first place if you didn't make an open source release. And you don't have to accept them into your project just because people have submitted them. The choice is yours!

[MadWatch]

A tip for the open source release: upload it to github. That way it will be super-easy for others to submit patches, report problems and create forks. It will also be a nice feather in you cap.

That's exactly what I would like to do.

And yes the game runs on Linux. I'm developing it on Linux and do regular ports on Windows (such a pain in the ass). Eventually I will have it run on Mac too as I did with my previous game. I didn't thought on using the Ubuntu Software Center, that's a good idea.

But most potential players are on Windows and I must find a good way to make them know about the game.

[Dacke]

The thing is that the Windows market is saturated with games. Linux users, on the other hand, are more eager to find new games. Especially free (as in freedom) games! See this great blog post regarding Wolfire's Mac+Linux policy: http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/12/why-you-should-support-mac-os-x-and-linux/

I actually think that you may get your biggest audience as a featured game in the Ubuntu Software Centre. You will be a big fish in a small pond instead of a plankton in the ocean. But getting featured is a bit like winning the lottery, so I do think it is a good idea to find other platforms as well.

Also:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Linux-users-contribute-twice-as-much-as-Windows-users
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/The-state-of-Mac-and-Linux-gaming