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0AD on Steam?

Souldbyt

By Souldbyt,
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Deicide4u Triplicarius

Deicide4u

Posted
Posted (edited)

I am not involved with the team, so this is me talking out of my backside. 

I believe it makes no sense to push for Steam until the game gets a decent single player campaign and fixes lag in the late game (it's getting there).

Edited by Deicide4u
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Obelix Duplicarius

Obelix

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Maybe we should adjust the answer to the corresponding FAQ.

IMO: Abandoning the alpha-versioning doesn't mean the community is resilient enough for a murderous increase of players and need for moderation due to a listing in Steam etc. I take over the 'disgusting place'-argumentation of @Seleucids.

Have you used the search function of the forum software with the query 'steam'? There are many more arguments than the ones stated in this thread.

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whk Tiro

whk

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As far as I know, the developers of 0ad themselves have allowed in their legal guidelines that anyone can sell it, as stated in the GPL2 and Creative Commons licenses. As long as the source code is publicly available, there is no legal or ethical impediment to selling 0ad with or without modifications. If they don't want it sold, then they should change the license; using the GNU GPL doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have to pay for the free version.

I think people who install 0AD from Steam won't care if it's alpha or beta or has campaigns; as long as they can play a single-player game, that's enough. If you don't do it, someone else will, whether by changing the logo, name, and so on, but keeping the same engine and assets. People don't want perfection; they just want to play. And if the game is open source, then modifying and selling it is completely free and allowed. Richard Stallman must be turning in his grave because Steam prevented a game from being sold under his own license.

If 0ad was removed from Steam it was only due to ignorance, but it is completely legal if the correct steps of Steam's guidelines are followed, and if the official studio doesn't do it, someone else will someday.

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Perzival12 Duplicarius

Perzival12

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1 hour ago, whk said:

As far as I know, the developers of 0ad themselves have allowed in their legal guidelines that anyone can sell it, as stated in the GPL2 and Creative Commons licenses. As long as the source code is publicly available, there is no legal or ethical impediment to selling 0ad with or without modifications. If they don't want it sold, then they should change the license; using the GNU GPL doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have to pay for the free version.

I think people who install 0AD from Steam won't care if it's alpha or beta or has campaigns; as long as they can play a single-player game, that's enough. If you don't do it, someone else will, whether by changing the logo, name, and so on, but keeping the same engine and assets. People don't want perfection; they just want to play. And if the game is open source, then modifying and selling it is completely free and allowed. Richard Stallman must be turning in his grave because Steam prevented a game from being sold under his own license.

If 0ad was removed from Steam it was only due to ignorance, but it is completely legal if the correct steps of Steam's guidelines are followed, and if the official studio doesn't do it, someone else will someday.

The license states that it is Free software. It legally can’t be sold.

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Mentula Duplicarius

Mentula

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5 hours ago, Perzival12 said:

The license states that it is Free software. It legally can’t be sold.

Free Software can legally be sold (although I am not stating this is specifically the case of 0 A.D.)

See this: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

The word "Free" in "Free Software" can be misleading due to its ambiguous meaning. GNU and FSF clarify which interpretation should be given to the word "Free".

Quoting from https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en: [...] think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” 

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Stan` Imperator

Stan`

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8 hours ago, whk said:

If 0ad was removed from Steam it was only due to ignorance, but it is completely legal if the correct steps of Steam's guidelines are followed, and if the official studio doesn't do it, someone else will someday.

The problem was that they were inpersonnating us and refused any communication. Then when they saw it wasn't going great they tried to sell it to do a grift.. Other than that there was no issue.

We didn't know what version they uploaded, if they added malicious software in it or anything.

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whk Tiro

whk

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This isn't the first time software that claims to be free has been commercialized; it's not a matter of personal opinion but a legal one. US laws, along with international agreements on intellectual property and trademark use, allow you to use and distribute it for profit or non-profit purposes, and this game is distributed under those terms, whether we like it or not.

Anyway, I agree with Stan. Trying to sell an open-source project on a massive platform like Steam should have at least been discussed with the development team or the lead developer, not for legal reasons but rather ethical ones. For example, I would have talked to the Wildfiregames studio and proposed a mechanism of paying for DLC while the game is free to download, and splitting the profits between the developers and the publishing team (myself), who is also in charge of advertising and other tasks. This would have created a mutual benefit where none currently exists, and it would have benefited everyone. I think that would have been the right thing to do.

But I mention again, the 0AD project license is already defined and that license allows anyone to distribute the software and sell it as long as they hand over the source code:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney

Quote

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?: Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

And in https://play0ad.com/ says:

Quote

Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. 0 A.D. is free software. This means you can download, redistribute, modify and contribute to the application under the same licenses: GNU Public Licence version 2 (GPL v2) for code and Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA 3.0) for artwork. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch.

The message on the official website is clear: if someone is selling 0AD, you can still download it for free. However, this doesn't mean that someone can't be selling 0AD, or that they're a bad person or the devil for putting a price on something that's free. In the case of Steam, people are free to pay to maintain the convenience of using 0AD on Steam, Steam Deck, Steam Machine, compatibility with community-created controllers, using the Steam social network to share games, etc., or they can simply download it for free from the official website and deal with dependencies, manual updates, Wayland scaling issues, and so on. People will still be free to choose.

This is similar to a sales scenario where a bag of flour at the market might cost you $1, but at the store across the street, it might cost $4. The store owner isn't being exploitative; you're simply paying for the convenience of not having to travel almost two hours to the market, paying tolls and spending money on gas while the sun beats down on your skin. The $3 difference isn't for the product's value, but for the convenience of having it right at your doorstep. In this case, having 0ad at a reasonable price wouldn't be considered theft. The price isn't for the software itself, but for the work involved in publishing it, paying Steamworks, and completing all the paperwork.

I really hope that Wildfiregames will release it on Steam someday, but if someone else does it and charges for it, I won't judge them; on the contrary, I'll congratulate them.

Remember the case of nexuiz, xonotic and the 2012 steam version, when the leader of the classic PC nexuiz project sold the rights and thanks to the fact that the game was published under a gnu gpl2 license (just like 0ad) they were able to create two forks, one called xonotic that is still free and another modified by the company illfonic implementing cryengine and that launched on steam and charges for each download.

What would scare me a bit is if Microsoft claimed some patent issues with the game mechanics (similar to Age of Empires). Since it's a free game, there's no way to make a legal claim because there's no malicious intent, but if it's sold, that's a different story. By example:

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whk Tiro

whk

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No, https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-information , 0.A.D, 0ad, wildfiregames, wildfire (software category), etc, are not registred as brand trademark. Perhaps it's important to formalize this development group and the project itself before someone takes advantage of it by registering the trademark in their name, preventing future distributions of 0ad. There are well-known cases like OpenOffice, where Oracle, after acquiring Sun Microsystems, registered the name and it ceased to be free software. The community had to create a new fork and change its name. Something similar almost happened with Mozilla Firefox. Debian wanted to create its own attended version of Firefox (Iceweasel), but Mozilla made a legal claim for the use of the name and trademark, which were legally registered despite being free software.

If you want a personal recommendation, I suggest you create a non-profit foundation dedicated to maintaining 0ad to keep the project free and perhaps eventually generate indirect benefits by supporting the developers. As a foundation, you'll be protected from legal action for patent infringement.

They registered the foundation as wildfiregames and under that foundation they registered the name 0ad. A very clear example is the case of doom 1 and 3, idsoftware released the source code and the community began to create incredible mods and forks. What was not distributed and was copyrighted were the models and designs of doom, the brand and so on, but the engine was free and people could create new games without the need to use the same models. But idsoftware was a legally registered entity with the doom trademark registered in its name, regardless of whether the code was free or not; this gives them much more control. I think you should do something similar, but under a foundation scheme.

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