[SUGGESTION] Distribution through Steam

Where can I get a ticket to make my case to the dev team? :p

Funny you should ask that as I'm sure you already know that all feature requests, bug reports and patches can be entered in the Xonotic tracker:
http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic/...acker_id=2

Steam Greenlight was launched today, so theoretically the masters of Xonotic can make a submission. I don't think they will but I'm just saying...

'd encourage you not to submit this to greenlight as community members. NVM that's against their terms anyway.

That said, could somebody with a Steam account have a look at the submission process and see if there are any legal documents / terms of use attached? That would be nice.

OpenTTD is on there so I guess at least their team think it's ok. (well, at least it was there yesterday evening, I don't see it now)

As for Steam's legal requirements you have to state that you have the copyright to the game, and accept this: http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

That's weird, it looks like the document you agree to upon signing up for a Steam account. Is there nothing greenlight-specific?

As for OpenTTD, it seems they're having a discussion in their forum as well. It seems they're having specific licensing hoops to jump through because the base GPLv2-licensed package does not include game assets, for which you either have to provide your own copy of Transport Tycoon assets or download separate packages, with at least one of them being incompatible with GPLv2. Therefore they can't distribute their game with sounds on Steam but instead have to come up with a way to download them ingame after installing from Steam.

Confirm - I can't find anything greenlight specific in the submission process documents. Maybe some additional legal stuff is introduced when a game gets accepted for steam (gathers enough votes on greenlight).

In that case, that's very sucky. We'll have to either wait for another GPL projoct to be accepted through Greenlight and contact their devs, or have our own devs contact Valve's legal.

I think contacting Valve's legal team is a better option.

just a note: Another FLOSS game on steam greenlight: Naev → http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi...d=93971156

Interesting. Does this mean Xonotic has a chance now?

It still means that it's up to the team.

As long as the team does not make an announcement of some sort, the answer will always be "it's up to the team". There's no need in repeating the same question over and over, Greenlight does not change a single thing in this respect.

Another note - Steam now requires a 100$ donation for a charity in order to put a game on Greenlight, so this probably gets most of FLOSS games out of there ;-P

Why so? If it's for charity, it doesn't seem too bad.

I have to wonder why they do this, though. Sure, it does some filtering, but it seems very arbitrary. Also, who provides the platform for donations?

EDIT: It seems they got spammed with bad games. The donation thing makes sense I guess. Too bad the charity is fixed.

I can now see why they have had to introduce this but also it's a shame that they're had to. The charity that they've chosen I can't say I totally agree with and it seems to be made from a commercial perspective rather than any other motive: it's a charity that provides games consoles and games for children in hospital. The map of hospitals that they have supported so far also isn't the most charitable picture:
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/donate
Virtually all in the US, some in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and 2 sites I can see in Egypt. The money will then get spent on games, driving revenue back into the games industry and getting a captive audience addicted to games that they'll then nag their parents for once they're out of hospital. Why put money into making someones time in hospital better? It's a waste of money. It's much better to put the money into treatments that get them better and out of hospital quicker.

Why not do something REALLY charitable like donating to Save the Children instead? I'd much rather do that than pay for some fat American kid who's in hospital to have to play THAT game who's name we are all familiar with but we only talk about in WW.

Before I comment on that I got to ask, are you serious?

Before I comment on that I got to ask, are you serious?

http://www.gametrailers.com/side-mission...to-charity

And the Steam blog article it cites: http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/anno...1741839763

EDIT: Also, insightful opinion there edh, I didn't see this from that angle.

Before I comment on that I got to ask, are you serious?

If you're asking if I'm being serious with my criticism of their selected charity, then yes I am.

It is hard to see if such an agreement is anti-GPL or not. While you are not able to put a fixed price on getting hold of free software, there is nothing about not being able to set a price on hosting it. As the money is then being used to buy non-free software I would have to see it as not being in the spirit of the GPL, even if it is not specifically breaching it.

If anyone themselves would like to donate to put a game on Greenlight, consider this: There are any number of charities that help children in the 3rd world which are a better cause than this. You can donate to them at any time. Xonotic is already freely available on the Internet, there is no NEED (desire!=need) for distribution on Greenlight or Steam. If you would like children in hospital in the developed world to be able to play games during their stay, there is any number of games for children released under the GPL. They do not NEED commercial computer games. Children in the developing world NEED food, water and medical supplied every day just to survive.

If anyone thinks I'm being a miser by saying this, that's not right. Just a few days I donated a whole load of old computer equipment to a charity rebuilding schools in the Phillipines after floods there. That is a better cause than this. I also donate old clothes, books, games I don't want to charity shops. I'm sure some of these old games end up in the hands of children whose parents can't afford new ones and I'm happy for that.

I can now see why they have had to introduce this but also it's a shame that they're had to. The charity that they've chosen I can't say I totally agree with and it seems to be made from a commercial perspective rather than any other motive: it's a charity that provides games consoles and games for children in hospital. The map of hospitals that they have supported so far also isn't the most charitable picture:
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/donate
Virtually all in the US, some in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and 2 sites I can see in Egypt. The money will then get spent on games, driving revenue back into the games industry and getting a captive audience addicted to games that they'll then nag their parents for once they're out of hospital. Why put money into making someones time in hospital better? It's a waste of money. It's much better to put the money into treatments that get them better and out of hospital quicker.

Why not do something REALLY charitable like donating to Save the Children instead? I'd much rather do that than pay for some fat American kid who's in hospital to have to play THAT game who's name we are all familiar with but we only talk about in WW.

cba to write a wall of text so I keep it short:
- hospitals can do whatever they want with cash donations, so if they need money for additional treatment they can use it
- you can't just always invest more money to reduce hospital stay duration or even cure everything (hint: rich people die too). What's wrong with making life a bit more pleasant for those who don't have a choice?
- there are poor children all over the world and the US are certainly no exception to that. Especially considering their health care system..
- your "getting addicted to video games while in hospital" statement sounds like, sorry, dumb paranoia. It implies that those kids haven't been in contact with video games before which I don't believe is true.
- stereotype of fat american kid always sells....

---

Children in the developing world NEED food, water and medical supplied every day just to survive.

With that as standard we may of course not help children in 1st and 2nd world countries before everyone in 3rd world is safe. Is that realistic? No.

Maybe we could spend that $100 to buy a banner on Nexuiz.com instead.

- hospitals can do whatever they want with cash donations, so if they need money for additional treatment they can use it

Having worked in the medical field, this isn't the way things work. Money will be allocated by the financial year per cost centre and donations will already have been targetted on certain things before the money is received. If you want to donate to your local hospital, by all means do this directly. What you will find is that they are raising funds for specific equipment, like say a new echo machine for the awful squelchy bits department. This helps drive donations and they get more money therefore. When you do this you can be 100% certain that your local hospital is getting that piece of equipment. In addition the correct gift aid paperwork (dependant upon locale) can be filled out to collect tax relief, more important still if you're a high tax band earner as they get more back.

With the Green Light donations you can't even select your local hospital to donate to, so you won't know what it is going on. If you go to the charities site then you have a link through to an Amazon wishlist for your hospital of choice. Do Amazon sell medical equipment? No, all you can buy is games and a few other select items. So go and donate to your hospital directly instead.

- you can't just always invest more money to reduce hospital stay duration or even cure everything (hint: rich people die too). What's wrong with making life a bit more pleasant for those who don't have a choice?

Your understanding here is a little incorrect. People do not go to hospital and stay in hospital until they are cured or die. Hospitals always want to reduce the length of stay and I'm sure virtually all patients and their families would also prefer to stay out of hospital. Most of the people in hospital are there as outpatients going to clinics or as day cases - you come in the morning, procedure happens, you go home at the end of the day. Overnight stays should always be avoided. With modern technology there is any number of possibilities to reducing patient stays in hospital. We have plentiful data connections in our homes, why not use this to transmit data from pacemakers, ICDs, holter monitors and any other equipment that used to require frequent hospital visits and stays back to the hospital? We have this technology now (I've used a lot of it, I've pushed a lot of it) and all it needs is initial investment, then the patient can return home earlier and play their own games at home.

As for patients who are terminally ill, they will not stay in hospital. There is no need for them to be there having to eat hospital food and pick up hospital infections and it is better they spend what time they can with their families. This is already the case now, we don't keep patients in hospital beds for the fun of it.

- there are poor children all over the world and the US are certainly no exception to that. Especially considering their health care system..

In that case I think they're parents would be much more worried about the fact their children were getting treatment or not and whether or not they were financially OK, not what entertainment their kids had over their average 3.8 day stay: http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/stat.../sb118.pdf

- your "getting addicted to video games while in hospital" statement sounds like, sorry, dumb paranoia. It implies that those kids haven't been in contact with video games before which I don't believe is true.

OK, so you go to hospital, you get to play a game a few times in your US average 3.8 day stay and there's no way you'll finish it in this time. When it comes to leaving time you want to take the game with you, your parents are so pleased to have their little darling back they go and buy the game on the way home as a treat. I've done hospital stays as a kid, I remember how the reward mechanism works!

I'm talking about those who don't have a choice but to stay at the hospital. Also I think you know as well as I do that average numbers don't say anything about subgroups or individual group members.

Why so? If it's for charity, it doesn't seem too bad.

I have to wonder why they do this, though. Sure, it does some filtering, but it seems very arbitrary. Also, who provides the platform for donations?

EDIT: It seems they got spammed with bad games. The donation thing makes sense I guess. Too bad the charity is fixed.

I don't know about you, but for me 100$ is quite a significant amount of money. I imagine most FLOSS projects think similarly. I know they did it to get rid of the spam (which I admit was unbearable), but IMHO having a 10$ payment would be enough to get rid of spammers & dumb kids. 100$ is just too expensive in my opinion.

They are obviously targetting slightly bigger FLOSS projects with putting the amount at $100. It sure might leave out games with a small community and/or a small development team.. but that's probably the point in the first place? I don't know.

I think the sum itself is acceptable, the cause that is should go to... well I was expecting the money to go directly to Steam when I first heard about this so I am pleasantly surprised already

however ... at that price ... we should wait until version 1

so, this happened: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi...=125965803
they also had kickstarter for their soundtrack or smt like that