Ail said:
schattenwolf86 said:
Soleron said:
The best way to end piracy is by making games free and seeking alternative sources of revenue, such as in-game content stores or in-game advertising.
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I really don't think that will give people the incentive to be game developers then. You can't assume people will be willing to buy in game content or that companies will want to advertise in game (especially if economic times are tight). You will get the hardcore crowd that will be willing to do it, but will developement cycles be shorter, longer, or the same as current developement times? Nintendo, M$, and Sony would not make any consoles, and there would be no point in pushing technology for games.
All the open source projects you listed are great examples of free software that have worked, but if games were free, we would not see the same amount of games that we have right now and the same quality.
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Most of these open sources work for either of the 3 following reasons :
- developed by people on their free time while they have a real job on the side
- free service provided by a company that sells others products on the size
- business pay the cost and we end up getting it for free ( Linux might seem free but every business running it actually uses copies they pay for like Red Hat and so on, mainly for maintenance/support reasons...)
- most of these survive by selling service around the free software.
Now if you want to get games for free and are willing to pay for service related to gaming, that's up to you....
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I just don't see how that would work on the game development side. Do you know any big games that follow a model similar to this and are doing well?
