Love = Commercial use?

[Neverfly]

Has anyone ever used LOVE for making money?
If not, is it possible (sell the games to game sites; addictinggames, armorgames, etc.)?

[bartbes]

I've heard of several people trying to sell LÖVE games, but I never heard of a result.
And it is possible, LÖVE's license allows you to make commercial software using it.

[Robin]

(sell the games to game sites; addictinggames, armorgames, etc.)?

This brings to mind the always-present idea of a LÖVE (butt-)plug-in.

God that would be awesome.

[deltaphc]

The license makes commercial games possible; just that the full Lua source code to your game will be easily viewable due to the way LOVE-based games are distributed. Anyone can open the binary in an archiving app.

Though I guess you could find/invent obfuscation techniques. Kinda futile though.

[bartbes]

But somebody recently told me your game doesn't have to be closed-source to sell it, he has a point there.

[Virox]

But somebody recently told me your game doesn't have to be closed-source to sell it, he has a point there.

Yes that's true, open source =/= freeware. It's perfectly possible to sell an open source software application. It's the license attached to it that determines if i can or may be sold, replicated, re-sold, change the license,...

[pekka]

I think the point here is that you can copyright and sell parts of your game while keeping the engine open source. Sure, just saying that you can't copy the media files and other data won't stop pirates, but if you can make a game that is good enough, some people will be willing to pay for it because it's the decent thing to do. Don't focus on the pirates, but on the fans your game might make.

This will generally not be a good way to make money, unless you really can come up with a hit game that everybody loves. Something interesting can happen if you really have a hit on your hands. The guys who made World of Goo basically gave it away recently for any price you wanted to pay. Many people bought for 1 cent, the lowest price possible, but others paid quite a bit more, because they wanted to pay for the game in line of what they thought it was worth.

Here is an article about the offer and the returns they got.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10 ... g-results/

The odds are that your game won't reach anywhere near these figures. And not your second game either. But you can use LÖVE to make games with the hope of recuperating some of the money you spent making them (if you don't spend much money, you are still spending time you could have spent working), and perhaps building up a fan community if you want to make several games with a similar theme or mechanic. People who loved your previous game will be much more open to the idea of paying you a few bucks for the next one. If you focus on the positive sides of the indie/amateur game making, it can be a rewarding hobby. Probably also a costly one in monetary terms

[qubodup]

A thread on making monies with open source games, enjoy! http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=35