I still have lot of unanswered questions about how I'd like to publish my game.
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I still have lot of unanswered questions about how I'd like to publish my game.
Make it #OpenSource is something I've already decided.
But I'm concerned someone could take the game to sell it on Steam. This is something I might do myself at some point (yet another unanswered question), but I clearly don't want someone who didn't work on it to get money from players (who could get the game for free instead but woudn't know or would be tricked into thinking they support devs)
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I still have lot of unanswered questions about how I'd like to publish my game.
Make it #OpenSource is something I've already decided.
But I'm concerned someone could take the game to sell it on Steam. This is something I might do myself at some point (yet another unanswered question), but I clearly don't want someone who didn't work on it to get money from players (who could get the game for free instead but woudn't know or would be tricked into thinking they support devs)
The last idea I have would be to keep the code open source and copyleft (GPL), but place the assets under a CC-BY-SA-NC license. The important part here is "Non Commercial", which would forbid to sell the game as-is.
It would still be allowed to fork, replace assets (which might be quite easy since I plan to use CC0 assets myself), and sell the result, but that would require work, restricting it to people motivated to actually work on a meaningful fork.
Would that be a good compromise?
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The last idea I have would be to keep the code open source and copyleft (GPL), but place the assets under a CC-BY-SA-NC license. The important part here is "Non Commercial", which would forbid to sell the game as-is.
It would still be allowed to fork, replace assets (which might be quite easy since I plan to use CC0 assets myself), and sell the result, but that would require work, restricting it to people motivated to actually work on a meaningful fork.
Would that be a good compromise?
For context, as a programmer and only developer of the game so far, I expect most of the "value" (if any) to be in the code, not in assets. Yet assets are still necessary to run the game.
Though I'm interested to know how people are handling open source games in general... I haven't studied that subject myself.
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I still have lot of unanswered questions about how I'd like to publish my game.
Make it #OpenSource is something I've already decided.
But I'm concerned someone could take the game to sell it on Steam. This is something I might do myself at some point (yet another unanswered question), but I clearly don't want someone who didn't work on it to get money from players (who could get the game for free instead but woudn't know or would be tricked into thinking they support devs)
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@nils_ramsperger yes, that might help indeed, but there would still be no legal barrier for someone else to also publish it on Steam (paid). If I stick to truly "free" licenses, such as GPL and CC-SA, then anyone is allowed to sell it...
Unless maybe Steam already forbids to publish two almost identical games? In which case, if anyone is allowed to do so anyway, how would they arbitrate which stays and which gets deleted?
(also, Steam is an example, but same questions apply to other platforms)
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@nils_ramsperger yes, that might help indeed, but there would still be no legal barrier for someone else to also publish it on Steam (paid). If I stick to truly "free" licenses, such as GPL and CC-SA, then anyone is allowed to sell it...
Unless maybe Steam already forbids to publish two almost identical games? In which case, if anyone is allowed to do so anyway, how would they arbitrate which stays and which gets deleted?
(also, Steam is an example, but same questions apply to other platforms)
@youen CC BY-NC might be an idea. But since I am no intellectual property lawyer, I can’t tell for sure.
I guess you will need some professional support to solve that issue. -
For context, as a programmer and only developer of the game so far, I expect most of the "value" (if any) to be in the code, not in assets. Yet assets are still necessary to run the game.
Though I'm interested to know how people are handling open source games in general... I haven't studied that subject myself.
About the Steam case in particular:
"Generally, any license that has a so-called “copyleft” element will be problematic when combining code with the Steamworks SDK. The best-known example is GPL."
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading/distributing_opensourceHowever, the copyright holder of the code does not have to respect the license, and they also say it:
"This can happen if the author of the code that is GPL-licensed has given the permission to do so." -
About the Steam case in particular:
"Generally, any license that has a so-called “copyleft” element will be problematic when combining code with the Steamworks SDK. The best-known example is GPL."
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading/distributing_opensourceHowever, the copyright holder of the code does not have to respect the license, and they also say it:
"This can happen if the author of the code that is GPL-licensed has given the permission to do so."This would mean I'm the only person allowed to sell a work based on my own GPL code on Steam. And also that if I merge any pull-request from someone else I'd loose that right, unless I get permission from each contributor.
But they also say "The author [can] decide that what the Steamworks SDK does is just a communication with a service that does not invoke the copyleft requirement of the GPL".
And then I'm wondering if this really only applies to "the author" or to anyone?
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undefined oblomov@sociale.network shared this topic
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The last idea I have would be to keep the code open source and copyleft (GPL), but place the assets under a CC-BY-SA-NC license. The important part here is "Non Commercial", which would forbid to sell the game as-is.
It would still be allowed to fork, replace assets (which might be quite easy since I plan to use CC0 assets myself), and sell the result, but that would require work, restricting it to people motivated to actually work on a meaningful fork.
Would that be a good compromise?
@youen NC is a bit delicate as license. For example, someone streaming the game on Twitch (and getting paid for it) would be technically violating it.
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@amandamakepeace that makes sense
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@tess What OS are you using at work?
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@tess US international layout is the answer. Apostrophes become dead accents
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@greenpeace Who made that illustration?
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@eco_amandine 💜 sorry to hear that!
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@transitionalaspect fingers crossed for you!
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@mandy ugh sorry to hear it's painful for you! Good choice to go through it anyway. I guess a few moments of pain is much better than letting something go undetected.
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@tess When I retire I want to make a website where you can pick any Unicode character easily, and define your own collections.
In my terminal I have alias ch='less ~/Dropbox/characters.txt', and the output starts with
U+00B1 ± PLUS-MINUS SIGN
U+00B2 ² SUPERSCRIPT TWO
U+00B3 ³ SUPERSCRIPT THREE
U+00B5 µ MICRO SIGN
U+00B7 · MIDDLE DOT
etc.
The one I use most is
U+2192 → RIGHTWARDS ARROW
(because I'm lucky to have a Mac and an Italian keyboard which is also fine for French)
