Marc Dequènes (Duck)

@Tyranicus: I never said "for free". Free Software is about freedom, not price. Many companies all over the world have proved you can release an open-source products and be wealthy. I've worked for one and releasing the source was clearly the key to its success, as a large user community gathered around us, the company got know, and it is now a leader in the domain in France. Nevertheless, for software which does not evolve much after release, it is a bit more difficult. Several ways are possible, like releasing the program but not the data, which would allow porting to another platform without altering the business. Releasing when the game is old enough and sales drop to a negligible amount is another. When Spiderweb cuts off prices like they did recently, they lower their income but gain popularity and attract more people which in turn increase the income in the long term. Releasing sources for old games could attract developers, which would port the game (often for free even if not a lesser job than creating one), which in turn would attract users on other platforms (Android, GNU/Linux, BSD…). Releasing the program (engine) without the data would also allow Spiderweb to reuse the ports, fixes, and improvements made by contributors in their future games, increasing the quality and development speed. The program source would then be available, but the plot/dialogs/graphics/… would still have to be purchased. This could be beneficial for both parties. Remember that we're not all simple-minded and understand what does making a living means, and if we love the games we don't want the company creating them to die and have no new games.

@Tyranicus: I explained other reasons why Steam is a problem from my point of point. I'm using wine to play Spiderweb games, true, but being a developer myself I'm able to tackle with problems while most users would have abandoned. And that's not to say it's easy or the game experience is always smooth. Last time i tried playing Avernum 4 it was really painfully slow, and Nethergate is slow and flickering as hell. So if it's possible to remove Wine from the equation, or at least one part, it would be great. I also asked about releasing games as Free Software, because it would help porting these games to many platforms. I understand developing for several platforms is a huge work and Spiderweb had to select a few which would bring them wealth. I believe releasing as Free Software would help mitigate this problem while not adding burden to Spiderweb. This would then remove Wine from the equation completely.

@Lilith: Thanks a lot for your reply. I feel relieved this was not the first step towards Steam-only distribution and the end of my adventures in your nice games. The intent of my post was also to inform other customers, so they can think about it and make their own opinion on the subject. If they still want to use it, so be it. As for Blades of Exile, i found this game was Free software very recently, hidden in the old games page. I've been part of the Free software community since a lot of years, and never heard of it, so i guess at this time Spiderweb was not famous yet and you probably did not reach the community. Nowadays, it seems at first glance maintaining this software would need a huge amount of work to run on recent systems and improve the UI to expected standards. So i hoped you would reiterate this experience with less old games and more advertisement among the FOSS community. Anyway, i'm happy this one has been Freed, thanks. @Tyranicus: Thanks for you correction about the internet requirement. I'll ask for a fix on the linked website. As for running Steam using wine, that's not an easy way to run games. Wine is working much better since last year, that's true, and require less and less tweaking to work well, but it's still difficult or slow on a lot of configurations. I'd also like my CPU cycles to be spend on more useful tasks than emulation. Being able to lend or resale your game is a basic right we lost a few years ago. Many people still exchange game cadriges with friends or resale them, why should we loose this still useful abilities? For your own information, in France, *many* video game stores still sell used PC games nowadays. Being used to restricted rights since childhood is not a justification for such restrictions.

Coin, As one of your customers, i wanted to react to your recent news. Quoting "Spiderweb Software Inc." <mailinglist@spiderwebsoftware.com>: > * Spiderweb Software Announces Glorious October Carnage Sale! I'm happy you're able to do such a permanent effort. It probably means the company is going very well :-). Nevertheless, for games i don't have yet, i would have paid the old price again or more with pleasure, in the hope older games, which should be quite beneficial, are released as Free Softwares. It would also quite help in at least two fields : - maintenance of the old but still pleasant games over time, while your company move on to new projects - help port games to new platforms (GNU/Linux, Android…) > * Spiderweb Software Is On Steam At Last Steam, besides eye-candy and goodies, is a DRM-oriented distribution platform. This is quite problematic, as it does not respect basic rights any customer should have. And by the way, if you ever decide to stop your old distribution method, i won't ever be able to play any of your games, as my system (GNU/Linux) is not supported by Steam. Here is an article which summarize the major problems with this system: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/topic/steam > We are hoping that our other new games will be accepted by Steam, and > we'll let you know if they are. Also, note that Steam selects the price > of games that appear on its service, and that price might be lower than > what we offer on our web site. That is to say, you're not anymore in control of your own business… That's quite sad. That said, thanks for your good work.