The Untapped Market for Indie Game Developers

  Blender Dumbass
December 19, 2025

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#gaming #games #gamedev #indiegames #libresoftware #gnu #linux #freesoftware #opensource

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I'm the stupidest man alive. Back in 2021 or so I wrote an article on Odysee where I basically outlined my plan to do Dani's Race, my libre open world game. Yet while the idea is descent and the game turned out to be quite fun, I completely disregarded any considerations when it comes to the market. I didn't think about who might want to play it.

Here is the problem. Dani's Race is not a polished game. It runs very poorly ( due to my idea of using UPBGE for it ). It has a rather small world. And as of now, not a lot of what to do. Like of course the stuff that it already has is nice. I enjoy the hell out of it. With the right music and the right mindset, the game is quite addicting. And I think I channeled my obsession with Michael Bay quite well in various design ideas in the game. But nobody seems to want to play it. I have not seen any video of the game published anywhere that was made without me asking that person to try it out. And even those are reluctant.

Some people suggested that I might be doing wrong kind of marketing. And they are probably right. They tell me that nobody will play a GTA-like game, just because this one is libre. Some people suggested that I might be making a terrible mistake by specifically trying to sabotage it from working on Windows. If you read my original blog post, I envisioned that all it takes for people to care about GNU / Linux and Libre Software is good looking games. I wanted to recreate the way Sony markets its "Playstation". By making exclusive titles that would force people to try out the GNU / Linux operating system. But apparently I miscalculated my advertising model. Sony can afford creating genuine hype around their exclusive titles. They can pay for ads. They can pay streamers and let's-players. They can make people genuinely want to play a game, for which you have to also buy a console. But that sort of thing doesn't work the other way around. It doesn't work with a silly little game made by one guy.

More than that, the whole concept of Petitions turned out to be a yet another stick in the wheels for Dani's Race. So to recap, I made a small game, that runs poorly, that requires you to use a specific operating system ( a lot of people will not learn how to install just for a game ) and where I added an insanely frustrating gimmick on top, which makes people needlessly confused. I put so much friction on the way towards the game that it is kind of obvious why it didn't work out.

But I had hope that maybe the core Libre Software people will at least appreciate the efforts. I'm trying to do something that looks good, on an engine that is under the GPL ( which makes the game under the GPL too ), where I at least try to make people to come over to freedom to play it. And with which I'm at least trying to develop a business model, that would work, while keeping the game libre. You know what I didn't take into account?

The Way the Hardcore Libre Software Users Live

I'm not considered a hardcore Libre Software user. On the freedom ladder I'm only about half way there. I'm further than most people. I daily drive GNU / Linux. I don't have a smartphone at all. ( I would try a Pinephone though, if I get my hands around one ). I use LibreJS and do not install proprietary software. But I still don't run a Linux-Libre distro. I still have a regular old bios. And even though I didn't install anything extra for my GPU. My hardware is mostly incompatible with Freedom.

Believe it or not, but Richard Stallman is not the only person who would not touch a proprietary program. On the fedi alone I already met a few that constantly correct me when I do a joke about Free Software which is not 100% technically correct. Because they themselves are way more into it. They are way more extreme.

At first I thought that those people will be really interested in a GTA-like game that looks fantastic that is 100% libre. But they immediately found a major flaw. Even though the game is libre, the hardware required to run the game properly is incompatible with freedom. Let me explain.

In order for a program to be libre, nothing about it should be hidden. Every algorithm, every functional part of the program should be available in what's called a "corresponding source". Basically in source code, written in a programming language, that people that know how to program can read an understand. This is very important to be able to audit software for malware. To be able to fix software if it does something the user doesn't want. And so on and so forth.

The Linux Kernel of today is technically not libre software at all. It is still under the GPL license, but the guy holding the copyright ( who can enforce said license ) is not interested in everything that's being shoved into it being completely 100% libre. He ( Linus Torvalds ) is more interested with the damn thing working on everything. So if a manufacturer of a new chip or a new motherboard or some new accessory, GPU or something else, doesn't want to publish how the damn thing actually works, but provides a binary program that can talk to that accessory, Torvalds is okay with putting this binary blob as is into Linux.

Linux Libre removes all those binary blobs from Linux. Making it "clean" so to speak, from anything proprietary. But that, as you probably guessed, significantly limits the hardware options when it comes to installing this thing. It works usually only on older machines that are well understood. And for which programmers ( through reverse engineering usually ) wrote actual, readable code. Code that is libre.

Now there are other problematic things that those people usually avoid. For example the Intel Management Engine. Since 2008 Intel started putting a small computer inside of every CPU that does something that could be a problem, if the software on it is not libre. A lot of security people claim that it could be used as a backdoor. AMD stated doing a similar thing since 2013.

If you look at a website like MiniFree.org you can see the sort of hardware that the true libre users run. They are currently offering a not so bad 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe for about 700 Brittish pounds ( as of when I write this ). Yeah those aren't gaming machines. The GPU is Intel based, inside of an older version of i5. The monitor only goes up to 1080p. And there probably very little hardware acceleration what so ever.

BUT!

It's Libre.

Purism... I know I know, you hate them for the Librem 5 fiasco... but they are offering a slightly better laptop. They are charging a premium for this, but at least it says on the website that it supports "light graphics processing and 3D gaming". Damn!

Now I know you probably would tell me that System76 or Valve's SteamDeck exist. Well those do exist. And those are way better than buying a machine with Windows 11. But those aren't libre. Valve's thing literally comes preinstalled with Valve's proprietary software ( Steam ). And System 76 computers are built with modern hardware, which makes them unable to run Linux-Libre systems. So those are not good.

The best thing I know that is comparable to the strength of those machines that is still libre is Talos II. There was a talk on Libre Planet of one mad person who actually bought one of these expensive bad boys as a gaming computer. But as far as I know most people just gonna go with the cheapest option. Probably a Minifree
laptop or something like that.

As you can probably tell, when I offer them Dani's Race ( a game that barely runs on my machine ), they are obviously completely uninterested. This game will not even launch on their machines.

So what is this Untapped Market?

As pointed out numerous times libre software doesn't mean you can't sell copies of it. And there were some rather good, rather fun games before 2008 ( and if we take the AMD metric before 2013 ) that those libre people lack at the moment.

If they are willing to spend money for a computer, paying insane rates, for old, or under-powered, by today's standards hardware, to have freedom. They might pay for your game, if you can make it 1) libre, and 2) run on their machines, on their operating system.

And the funny thing is, if the problem is just graphical, you can just have an insane range of level of details. And have a game that looks very good on modern hardware. But one that also is possible to play just fine on a laptop from MiniFree running Trisquel or something.

Now, you have to keep in mind a couple of things:

- Developing such a game on your modern machine, even if it runs GNU / Linux is probably not the best of ideas. Your modern machine will most definitely run way better and way faster than anything they have. You need to actually have one of those machines, with one of those systems, so you could actually test viability of certain ideas. And your optimization got to be on a very good level to pull something like this off. But think about it. With modern tools, with texture baking ( where you can even use path tracing for shadows and stuff ), you could make a game that looks damn nice while still having it run on something like the mini-free laptops. And if you are thinking of 2D ( or even better pixel art ) you are pretty much good to go. Just watch out not to overload everything with too much particle effects and compositing.

- The payment model would be a little challenge to figure out. First because the game got to be libre for that to even make any sense, you have a sort of problematic position. You want to both sell the game, but you also allow people to share it ( without it it would not be libre ). How do you deal with it? Well you could simply ignore the problem all together and hope that people will not share it too much. Or you could incorporate something like my Petitions idea.

- But then you also need to thing about how the money is transferred. Using paypal or stripe or anything else that requires running proprietary JavaScript code in the browser defeats the purpose entirely. Free Software Foundation uses CiviCRM which implemented credit card forms in Free Software, for example ( I don't know the details, you may need to reach out to them ). And as you can see on the site of Minifree laptops, you buy them by writing an email to them, where they will send you payment instructions. That is also an option. At least one way to pay in a libre way should exist. And no, it is not crypto. Because in the end of the day, there are transactions of buying and selling that stuff that also count.

- Licensing and compatibility. For a non-libre game you can use a bunch of payed assets and libraries that are licensed in such a way that will be incompatible with what you are doing. You will need to be careful about those sorts of things. But if you have any experience developing regular libre games, you already know that.

So it is not simple. It requires a genius. But maybe there is something to it. Maybe there is a way to do it. And then maybe there is way to even conker this new market. Which could be good for all 3 groups of us. The libre people, because they will have something to play. The game-devs, because they would have something to eat. And, well, the rest of us. Because libre software will become a much more viable solution.

Happy Hacking!!!

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c:0 @Troler
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  Troler c:0


Libre games... most of them are already recreations of old classics. That's why I am so interested in Thrive. It takes the concept of Spore and runs a thousand miles with it!

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