Libre Games and Making Money: Introducing Petitions

  Blender Dumbass
January 30, 2025

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#Libre #FreeSoftware #LibreGames #Userfreedom #Money #Business #Finance #Gaming #Gamedev #GamingOnLinux #Gnu #Linux #SteamDeck #Petition

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Most Free / Libre Software projects are maintained either by strong communities, or through some kind of donation system. Libre Games struggle with both aspects. There are community driven games, but those lack vision and coherent style, because different people contribute differently, on different skill levels and with different stylistic choices. And no corporation is benefiting from existence of libre games, therefor no serious donations are ever expected to be coming their way.

With the petitions idea, which could also be described as some sort of "reverse crowd-funding", I want to try to give Libre Games a chance at sustainability. Which if successful could make Libre Software as a whole more appealing. And perhaps do some good in the world.

Here I will explain the problem and propose a solution which I'm already working on and implementing somewhat for one of my games.

The problem

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Valve's Steam-Deck is kind of a big deal in the world of Free Software. The console uses a GNU / Linux operating system under the hood, yet it can play most AAA proprietary games. Which is largely due to Valve's involvement in development of Proton - a piece of software that is designed pretty much solely to make Windows games run well on GNU / Linux machines.

Because of Valve and because of the Steam-Deck people can game on GNU / Linux right now. And therefor the need for Windows is diminishing as we speak. Yet not the need for proprietary software. Those people who transition to GNU / Linux because of Proton, do that to play proprietary games. Not Libre games.

When you move to GNU / Linux everything is possible. Software can do so many things. And many times many more things than what is possible on something like Windows. You need video editors? You got plenty. You want text editors, you got Emacs and maybe some others. You have a wonderful Office Suite, a stellar, world class 3D animation suite. Amazing software all throughout. Yet when it comes to games you got maybe a few which can maybe compete with maybe some games available for Windows, while most libre games are kind of, actually, utter garbage to be frank.

Why is that?

Well the answer is very simple: Nobody sponsors the development of Libre Games. While a lot of parties with money are interested in a robust Libre Operating System and with it in robust Libre tools, such as Blender. Go to Blender's Sponsors page and you will see big names: AMD, Nvidia, Volkswagen, BMW, Epic Games. Why? All those companies directly or indirectly benefit from Blender's existence. But what corporation benefits from the existence of, say SuperTuxKart?

You could argue that there is a big community of people each of which can help a little bit. And this is true. SuperTuxKart in particular pretty much holds on user-made addons. But this has a problem of its own. The game has no consistency. One map looks amazing and the next one looks like crap. One map is done in this style and the next one done in that. Everybody contributes on different levels of skill and with different styles in mind, which creates a very strange uncanny game.

The only exception to this, as far as I know is 0 A.D.. And this is truly a miracle that this game exists. And it is an even greater miracle that it is so consistent.

What needs to change?

Games are art. Therefor they should be done with a vision. Yet making them proprietary is an injustice. So there should be a way to make games with consistency and still have them be Libre.

We need some way to enable game artists to hire people that can adopt to a style. And make money in the process. So that more game developers will look at Libre games as a lucrative endeavor. This way we can get Libre games that are consistent and good.

But how?

Solution!

Petitions! ... I'm still not sure about the name. I thought about "Unlock" or "Reverse Crown-Funding". People called it "Milestones" and "Taking the game hostage". In any case, for simplicity I will be using "Petitions" here.

What do I mean by that?

Let's take for example the Dani's Race version 2025-01-19. I copied the game project at that date and made a sort of backup folder of it which I didn't change since. I didn't publish it though. It is still technically unpublished, in development stuff. But in the same time I looked at Franzo's Mastodon Account ( Franzo being a person that helped me a bit with the game ) and saw that he had 211 followers there. I decided to tell people that if that number grows to 250 I will publish that version of the game. At the moment of me writing this, it is already 223 follower. So you could argue that 12 people agreed to my demands and "signed" the petition of the game release.

I'm using an analogy of a petition here. But the signatures can be anything. They could be followers, as you could see, somewhere on the internet. Or they could be something else. One time the petition was based on an amount of comments under a certain video I did. I could do other things too. As long as it has a number and clear enough instruction of how to make that number change. I can make the goal be anything.

Now imagine the goal being say $100. And instead of a link to a mastodon page there will be a credit card form. A form where the user inputs the price that the user wants to give. Basically there is a metaphorical bucket of money, somewhere. And when it fills up the game is released. Anybody can put into that bucket as much or as little as they want to. And as soon as the bucket is full, everybody, including those that didn't participate get the release of the game.

The idea is, at some point, to start pivoting to a paid petition like this. The final result. The final released game is always libre. With proper git repository and everything. But now it also, in a very strange way, has a price to it. Not a price for a copy. But a price for a release itself.

Now imagine also that the software to make such petitions is also Libre. And therefor any other game project that will want to start making some money ( or at least start gaining some social media statistics ) could just do that too.

This is a revolution! If it works it can flip everything! It can give Libre games finally the competitive edge. And can give the entire ecosystem of Free / Libre Software an enormous boost.

This is what I am trying to achieve with Dani's Race. This is why I believe, despite how strange those petitions seem, those petitions are important. This is why I think you should at least try and play along.

Still unsolved problems

I wrote about the petitions idea to Richard Stallman. He said he didn't see any problem with the idea, on an ethical level. But sees one which is practical. Which I will have to sort somehow out.

How the hell will people transfer money?

I did ask him about the Libre Software used to make credit card forms on FSF's Store and their Donations Page. He said that not every bank will be willing to do such a gamble. And that most of them will demand their own proprietary software ( or proprietary software that they "trust" ) to be sent to the client's browsers instead.

I could go the Electronic Frontier Foundation Donation Page route and use Stripe or some other bogus proprietary service. Or I could go the other route and implement it using some stupid token or crypto-currency. But in all those cases, people still run proprietary software on their devices in some steps during the transaction. And I don't like it.

I don't mind having an easy to use PayPal, Stripe or even Google Pay or whatever button on the site for lazy asses. But I want to have at least one, even if not very practical, way for ultra-orthodox Free Software people to be able to use those petitions.

I have some ideas. FSF wrote in one page that you could in theory show up in their office in Boston with cash, or send them a deposit check. Maybe normal bank transfers, which you hopefully are still able to do in person, can make it work somehow. This in theory should be enough and for lazy asses a page for PayPal stuff or Stripe stuff could be added as well.

Then there is the legal part in all of that. If I make money I need to pay the tax. And in my country there is a requirement to have an accountant that calculates the tax for me, which has to be properly licensed. I have an accountant in my family. And know some firms that do that stuff. It should not be hard.

The problem is that I want all of that to be easily replicate-able by other projects. And I'm already pretty much demanding that they know how to setup a web-server. But here I'm adding onto it legal and financial complexity. While I'm not a trusted lawyer ( I'm not a lawyer what so ever ). So how am I supposed to make a tutorial about all of it without it just blowing up like a cracky MacCracky?

Current Project Timeline

One year of social media petitions. From now till about 2026. This is for the community to get used to the idea. This is to test out some bugs. And also to grow the audience.

During that year I have to figure out how to make the financial stuff work. And write it down in such a way that I could create a guide for it for the other projects. Everything should be 100% legal. And there should be at least one way for orthodox free software users to transfer money.

Next will be a year for gradual transition toward paid petitions. It should not be abrupt. And it should not be transitioning fully. I think to stop at something like 60% to 75%. So some petitions could still involve cooperation of poor people. Or that I could help other people grow their audience, like I'm doing with Franzo right now.

Then there will be another year, or so, when I will gradually grow the price to the level at which I can live off of the project alone. And then slowly to the point where I could get other people hired to help me with the project. I hope that by that time there will be enough people that growing up the prices will not increase how much each individual person will need to give.

If that works, next step, would be to convince other project to do the same.

Now I just said that it should take 3 years. But it could take 10, or might now even work what so ever. It is up to the people. It is up to you, actually. Because I can do my part. But if people will not like this idea. Or will ( as I've seen some do ) actively rebel it, well nothing will work. And Libre Games will remain crap.

I know I sound like a cult leader preacher guy who says that he has the answer for everything. No. I'm not that smart. But I'm trying to do something. And that something, works in my imagination. So maybe it can work. We should try. So please let's try. Let's do that.

Happy Hacking!!!

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  cptbichez c:0


Some libre games went to Steam through Steam Greenlight program. And only because of that program (now dead) you can get Battle for Wesnoth on Steam alsongside itch.io and standalone which it in my opinion is a nice success story of a libre game (if the goal it to make it more visible on a mainstream platform)

I find that petition shows engagement to "get it/release it/play it" but not to "contribute" and for libre game i think both is best but it's not bad. Matter of fact i think petitions are great.

Also a light patronage and/or single time donation can be a solution, there's plenty of solutions. but i would advise one more than other because patronnage + petition can take a project in a chokehold in lack of equilibrium between patrons and engagement sometimes. Such as many great crowdfounding projects in search for their own sustainability even with a low entry bar.

Maybe it's a deep dive for "how libre software is funded" search because that's really interesting, a lot are non profit associations, some are solo devs on Liberapay, some do a fundraise once a year, some are funded through opencollective

but either way, no matter the time it takes until you find the best for this project, keep up the great work and a clean path of thoughts!

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