How to release GDevelop on Steam.

GDevelop general
1

I was thinking about a possible Steam release of GD. Personally I’m really would like to see it happening, and I’m
sure about that, a Steam release also could benefit GD. To submit GD on Steam Greenlight, cost €100. But as a possible Steam
release would benefit not only GD and 4ian but also everybody who use it, I think we (the community) should fund the money for 4ian.
But I don’t want to start to look for fundings here without 4ians permission and thoughts on this.

I have opened this topic mainly to draw attention of the community on possible funding of Steam release and
suggest to everybody to consider it and 4ian, to open a topic on the french and english forum and ask for help from the community to release GD on Steam.
€100 people! Not a lot of money at all! I don’t believe that, there is no at least 10 unselfish person here who could help out 4ian with €10.
€10 euro the bottom, the minimum of that what 4ian deserves especially when he’s about to spend all of the money on GD (for our benefit) instead of spending on his own needs (for his benefit).
Just to mention, I’m ready to donate, I suggest to everyone to consider it and 4ian to open the topics to get feedback from possible funders.

The idea is simple. 4ian open a topic in the english and french forum, tell the story, ask for help, and everybody who CAN and ONLY who CAN donate, write a reply and mention how much he\she could donate.
If we have enough offers (€100), everybody press the donate button. If we fail on this, only 1-2 person can offer something or even worst, everybody offer but finally nobody donate, that will be shameful for as and also a bit worrisome, but at least we going to know where we are as a community. BUT I leave it to 4ian to decide it if it something that worth to try and he would like or not.

1 Like
2

As other people suggested, it would be indeed interesting to release GD on steam Greenlight, but alas there is a 99€ that must be paid.
I think I’m going to open a project on Kickstarter.com to raise money for registering Steam Greenlight.

I hope I’ll be able to release a new version before the end of the week, and I’ll start the kickstarter project at this moment :smiley:

3

Am, I’m not sure if I can support the Kickstarter project, because as far as I know, it store my card details to debit my account only when the project is funded. I don’t like to store card details online. The only place I trust is Paypal. :blush:
That’s the reason I have suggested to ask the community to donate.
But maybe I’ll buy a prepaid card or something to use it on Kickstarter.

Otherwise, Kickstarter is going to be about only to fund Steam Greenlight (€99) or you going to add some stretch goals too?

4

First we could try just to fund the Steam Greenlight registration. If we can get more money than needed, it will be saved for using it later for something related to Game Develop.
What is interesting with Kickstarter is that it could help GD to gain more visibility (on the contrary, making the fund raising on the forum is nice but only limited to the members of the forum). Some people could even discover GD by browsing the projects on Kickstarter.

If it’s successful enough, we can image creating other kickstarter project for supporting the development of a particular feature. :slight_smile:

5

I don’t think Kickstarter is available to France citizens. You may try Indiegogo though. This is what Craftstudio, another French game development platform, did and not without success.

You should also contact gaming sites like Rock Paper Shotgun and gamedev-related sites such as e.g. Gamasutra.

I’d try to contact Valve as well to see if Greenlight process could be bypassed.

6

Indeed, looks like Kickstarter only available in US, UK and Canada, though they have celebrated the UK release also as European release but European citizens are not mentioned only UK citizens. But indiegogo sounds good to me :slight_smile:

I don’t expect you can bypass the registration fee anyway. You can bypass the Greenlight process if you are a well known company or you have released at least one game on Steam before but if you are a small indie company or individual, first time on Steam, it a must have process (and registration fee) I guess at least for the first game\software.

7

That’s correct. A good example of this is Ubuntu’s recent indie gogo campaign.
They didn’t succeed to fund their phone device, but the actual campaign won them so much free/cheap marketing that it is ridiculous. Canonical sure knows how to make it in the news with a big splash :smiley:

Another example of feature funding is the synfig guys.
indiegogo.com/projects/set-y … nuary-2014
They have been cashing in 1000$ every month. But to be fair- they already had an active community.
However- the new feature demonstration development videos have been popping in linux/open source related feeds everywhere. Libregraphicsworld has been featuring them in the news every month- actively supporting their campaign.

They are a popular news organization- featuring news not only about open source software, but also proprietary software that has become available on linux
libregraphicsworld.org/
Try getting in touch with them, they might be able to help spread the news.

If you are doing a kickstarter you need these things:

  • a set of goals- express why you need the funding- what would it achieve. Realistic goals. Why it benefits everyone.
  • reward tiers - funding reward tiers allow those who fund it to get some small awards. It’s an opportunity to sell some merchandise/digital content.
    If this engine had a cheap license you could sell- having it as a reward tier would motivate people to spend money simply to buy it.
    For example- even if you sold it for 5-10$ - or what you sold was not the license, but exclusive early access to a new version with the awesome new features that are getting funded. I think that putting a price on something creates this mindset that it is valuable- in the minds of those who haven’t even tried it yet. Setting a low price and labeling it as a “special limited offer” creates urgency to act. This is a marketing trick steam has been using since the beginning. You can also say that you made it cheap, so more indie developers can acquire it- but also because you need the money in order to spend more time working on it.
    If the license will always be free then at least consider doing the “exclusive access to beta releases” award. Anything relevant to the goal as an award tier would really help.

Steam would help you get funding and at the same time keep it free if you like. How? Well, krita developers are doing exactly that!
Krita is absolutely open source/free. However the version on Steam is being sold to fund the development. Steam users buy it, simply to put it in their collection and at the same time be able to use steam to install/update it.

Another way of selling digital content in order to fund development is to do what the Blender foundation has been doing! Sell learning materials.
-pdf book
-more polished example project with a video tutorial
-etc etc
You could use some of the money from a kickstarter to hire somebody to create this learning/example content under your supervision- as a practical demonstration game. A game that demonstrates the capabilities of this engine in a polished way. Synfig guys are spending some of their funding to create learning videos to sell- as an extra funding source. Actively creating a small market around the software and the campaign.
After a while you can even make the older learning videos free and have the benefit of adding more content to gamedevelop’s arsenal to lure new users with good documentation and proof of awesomeness.

  • demo video- demonstrate what is gamedevelop, why is it so special (only user friendly platformer engine under linux, it’s free license,it’s visual programming design, it’s main selling features) then demonstrate your goals (in this case getting it to steam greenlight ) (getting the word out- as you would need votes) how would that benefit the entire community. You dont have to show your face if you don’t like to, but if you are confident- and do speak personally to the camera- that will help earn personal trust to the audience. Aim to illustrate visually the engine and steam greenlight- all the stuff you are talking about- when you underline them as a point. It’s better to show than tell. But it’s also good to start (and end) the video by showing yourself- the speaker. Who are you, why are you making this video.

Try to somehow gather people’s emails - everyone who tried the software can write down their email before they download it. it doesn’t have to be their real email (no need to confirm- as that can be annoying). Enterbrain has a system that does that. Wont let you download without writing something in the email text box.
That way if you had those emails now, it would have been easier to let everyone know that you are doing a campaign - that this software is still alive. It would have helped immensely.

The biggest goal is to motivate people to reshare the video and spread it like wild fire. Even those who didn’t fund it can all post it somewhere.

8

Please don’t be another Engine001 or 3DRad. The fact this engine is 100% free without any shenanigans is what brought me to it. I am OK though with tier rewards in form of T-Shirts or special mention in About box as founders. Or even customly making graphic/music sets or posters.

9

Many thanks blurymind for your ideas and useful suggestions :slight_smile:
I’ve contacted libregraphicsworld.org and I’ll surely use Indiegogo if it seems better than Kickstarter.

The next version of Game Develop will display a “Community News” on the start page: It will be used to inform users of things like the crowfunding project ( There will be links included below the “Community News”) and later for others things like the release of a nice game created with GD…
(The news will be updated at the same time the software is checking for update, i.e at each startup).

I’m thinking about nice “reward” things: Surely I want to reward donators without restricting usual users.

10

Hi, glad to help!
I want this project to florish. :smiley:

Anyway, it’s perhaps also a good idea to research similar kickstarter and indiegogo projects that have failed in the past.
Here is an example:
openfl.org/community/showcas … rpg-maker/

Looking at blender for example. They didn’t open sorce their software and then look for funding. It was the other way around! They asked for funding in order to open source it! Then used the funding to found the Blender foundation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History
Today blender is one of the most succesful open source software out there. People create business models around it. If you are interested, look at what exactly the blender foundation is doing in order to keep it so healthy and widely adopted.

One of the mistakes this guy made was doing it the other way around. He made all of his awards freely available before starting the campaign - then had nothing exclusive to offer to the funders or to those who would like it to get funded (thus spread the word).
Basically watch and analyze as many indiegogo and kickstarter videos as you can. Failed ones and successful ones. Take notes and plan a strategy before even launching the campaign.

You have to think of your target audience and what you can offer them:

  • explain that getting it on steam greenlight is not the “real” end goal, but a means to get to the “real” end goal faster- explain how you would use the funding for their benefit and why it is important.

So what is the “real” end goal?

  • to linux users: making gamedevelop more stable- it is currently the only free begginer friendly html5 engine for linux! But it needs work to get more stable. Some stuff is still buggy! Tell them how benefitial this engine is to their comunity.
  • to gamedevelop users: adding a feature that has been in high demand.
  • to people who have never used gamedevelop- explain that it is the only beginner friendly html5 exporting engine with a free license. Explain that it is quite good at the moment, but you would like to make it much better. Explain what you are planning to imrpove and how the funding would help. How it would help them make their own games for fun or to sell on steam,ios,android or any other platform that supports html5.
    These are just examples. I am sure you can come up with some great stuff too :slight_smile:

Don’t forget that when you make promises for a funding campaign, you dont have to meet them always on time. Double fine for example has been delaying their kickstarter funded game for years. They had the nerve to ask for more money after they made their funding goal 9000%.

And finally- you can mention some award extended goals as well - but don’t go into too much detail in the first video. When you reach your goal, then you will need to make videos about the extended goals -dont stop at 99$. Keep selling the future. Try to update the indie gogo news page at any ocassion. That will remind existing backers to spread the word and would also create extra news for the campaign.

If your campaign’s money goal is 99$, then almost certainly you are going to have to make some extended goals videos. I am somehow hopeful you will easily make that amount in the first days of the campaign with the right pitch. I say dont settle for only 99$. Go beyond with extended funding goals :smiley: Even after it ends- add a link to allow people to continue to fund by preordering/getting some sort of an award.

11

I’ve thought about tier rewards and here’s what I got:

-Let backer dictate what feature you’ll work on next (unless some unreasonable one, like 3D). That would make people feel that they can influence development and I know at least 1 person who’d buy that tier. Don’t remember project name, but I remember that one project gave such reward and it found basically like 70-80% of goal.

  • GD t-shirts, mugs, etc. Quite cheap and you’ll make someone happy.
  • Place in About Box, perhaps in Founders/Backers section.
  • Special, made just for you set of graphics for your game with “do whatever with it” license. For that, obviously you’ll need to pair with some artist.
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well not literally “dictate”, it’s safer to let them “vote on” one of 3-4 already planned features :smiley:
Don’t quote me on the “already planned” part though. Not a good way to sell it.

God knows who buys the tier and then demand something unrealistic from you.

But yeah, synfig is doing that as well. They hire a dedicated developer for the feature and he get’s paid to get it done- and he gets it done.
Their model is on a month-by-month basis.

With every feature he gets done, he makes their case stronger - for funding- as they add his tech video demo of the feature in action and incorporate it in the next funding pitch

Please note that synfig being open source- completely- gives them an advantage funding wise. There is a big group of people who would fund it because they like knowing that the open source version of flash animation software is getting better thanks to them.

The best approach to these campaigns is really to put some of your best assets to sell in affordable places. For example 15$ tier should be something that people would like to own or get access to before anyone else. Really tempting. That is the case with most successful campaigns.
It doesn’t have to be an immediate award. A lot of the biggest selling tiers are actually preorders. People preorder a digital product are motivated to buy it during the campaign (limited time window)- when it’s price is lower than the one it gets after release. If not license, you can have them preorder a game made with it+a teaching video. Learning materials. Or an exclusive plugin. You need to offer something valuable at a premium price if you really wanna make some serious sales. The demo video should advertise it - make people excited to own it.

Selling merchandise will cut some of your profit for the goods and really- a lot of people wont order- because they know the hassles behind delivery.

13

Just to mention, there is no already planned features for GD. I mean, normally, we never know what is going to be implemented next and also no guarantee for that if there are any features or improvements you would like to see is going to be implemented in the future, ever :laughing:

But I think we went far away from the original idea, mainly we want GD to be released on steam as-is not to fund the development of any feature or new version.

I think 4ian need to decide first if he want the development of GD to be funded or only Steam Release.

If 4ian want only 100 euros to release GD on steam, he only need to mention “Linux” and “Game Development” and “Steam” and “Free”, in the first minutes 100 people from Linux and Steam community going to offer 1 euro at least, can’t be a problem. But if he want to gather even more money, in my opinion some mugs and early access wont be enough he need to offer something related to GD and exclusive, no other way around it.

The problem is that, GD is completely free, there is no early version, beta version, premium version\features nothing to offer that could really convince anybody to support. I mean mugs, t-shirts, your name in the special thanks section…etc only a nice way to express our gratitude and a nice little extra for support but not going to convince anybody. Need to offer something that people want. For such a free tool, the best offer is feature.

The vote on feature can be a good stretch goal in my opinion. Every cent above 100 euro, could be spent on to the development of a feature. Personally I liked the way as they did with 3DRad. Unfortunately it was not successful because the money gathered slowly and finally nothing implemented and the development of the project is stopped after all, but mainly a good idea, which is to make a list of features, set how much it cost to implement, and everybody who donate can choose which feature would like to be implemented. Similar to stretch goals, but the funder can choose in this case. I don’t know if it possible with any fundraising site, but I could imagine something like this to convince people to support GD not only to be released on steam, but also to implement features they would like to see in Steam version. In case if a feature is not funded, all it fund going to be spent on the next feature, or funders could choose more than 1 option by priority.

If it too complicated simply make traditional stretch goals:
-100 : steam release
-200 : this feature
-500: that feature

The other option is to make a premium version of GD, maybe the Steam version can have some premium extensions (funded features), not available for free but only on steam only for funders and people who buy it on release. And also beta access for funders.
I know it sounds horrible, but In my opinion GD can’t be free forever, at some point 4ian need to make money for living if not already. This is life, nothing can survive if it free, not supported and make no money, except if it open-source. So maybe this is the time to try make a premium version at least for extensions\features on Steam by offering premium features for funders and buyers. If you want to keep it “free”, sell it cheap on release, but some way the reward need to be related to GD and exclusive to funders\buyers.

But if you hate the ide of any premium content, then simply try to fundraise by saying you want to release this tool with this features, cost that much to be available for free for everybody and such.
I have seen FREE projects funded successfully but not many and most of them was free as “open-source”.

Anyway, all I want is a Steam version with Workshop :slight_smile:

14

following this thought - the steam version of krita (a free and open source painting software) is paid, however it’s premium feature is:

  • Integration with the steam cloud- empowering steam users to share content- assets like brushes and presets.
    -Empowering stam and steamos users to use Krita on their living room TV and tablets with steam on.
  • Compability and easy instalation and upgrade

Also they make it very clear in their campaign that this is needed in order to hire more developers.

Another thing to look at is Leadwerks. They did exactly what ddabrahim said in his post and their campaign succeeded far beyond it’s goals.
kickstarter.com/projects/19 … s-on-linux

All the linux geeks raved about it, many bought it because:

  1. It offered a discounted license for the linux edition of the next generation version (3.1) - promising features that no other edition has
  2. It’s main goal was to get leadwerks in a stable state on linux- develop linux games on linux - clear goal and he’s been at it ever since- with updates on the progress almost twice weekly! So not only promise- he demonstrates integrity, while the sales continue after the campaign.
  3. Steam- integration with steam cloud- steam users using leadwerks to create and sell games on steam
    store.steampowered.com/app/251810/
    sharing/selling their workshop assets on steam - going straight in the engine with a click.

Josh Klint is a pretty smart guy when it comes to marketing. He knew exactly where to hit his points in order to get just the right audience and convince them how exciting this engine is.

With Gamedevelop, as I see it the main selling point is this:
“Bring visual programming with html5 (multiplatform) export to linux users. No longer would you need to learn a programming language in order to rapidly prototype games! No longer would you need to boot into windows in order to create multiplatform 2d games that way! We need the funds to bring this engine to a more mature stage!”

As I see it 4ian has to decide on a model. He can go indie-proprietary like scirra. Or go completely open source like Krita/blender/synfig.

Now both have advantages and disadvantages.
With the first option- he has to hire staff, run a company. Get more manpower to deal with paying clients, documentation and development.

With the second option- other developers will start contributing to the code and even forking it - for fun,presonal need or even work. However, he will need to continue to be the code maintainer until somebody who understands it as well as him can take over. Without a code maintainer to check quality of code before doing a merge, writing documentation on apis and so on- an open source project doesnt have a big chance of wide adoption.

There is of course the option to stay as is- free, partly open source, with a lot of potential- but only one dedicated developer, who also writes tutorials and runs the forum. That doesn’t stop you to take small steps- like getting it on steam for starters - leaving life changing decisions for a later stage. :smiley:

You also have to think of the main competition- scirra. The price of their license, their market. What can gamedevelop offer that doesn’t look like is a clone of their features- and at the same time totally fill a gap- a big weakness of theirs. Linux is a good start btw :stuck_out_tongue:
What limitations does the free edition have?

Some engines say this- we are totally free, no limitations. However if you make over X amount per year from a game you made with us, then you need to purchase X license (one time payment). Or - our engine is completely free, but if you would like a plugin for advertisement in your mobile games- you have to buy it for x amount.

Can one eat the cake and have it too? It all amounts to research and playing the cards well.

15

In my opinion, the problem is that GD is not very popular even as a completely free product and maybe don’t worth it or make anything better to force anyone to buy a licence, though maybe worth it to do something like scirra.
If you make a commercial game and you make X amount of money, need to buy a pro licence. Or need to buy a pro licence for any commercial use. But this could work only if the user base of free version is huge, to get there GD need to get closer to competitors in terms of features.

Open-Source could benefit GD and the community for sure, but that something which not everybody would like even if they don’t mind to share the product for free. The source-code need to be considered seriously because if you release it, no way back, though 4ian could use a licence to let people only to improve and extend GD by using the source and the modified source need to be shared on the forum, the source can’t be used to make your own version of GD or use any part of the source in your own engine. For example TGC was doing similar with FPS Creator. They have released the source code of the core engine, and it worked. Tons of MOD’s released many of them fixed bugs, added new features…etc.
But just like with commercial licence, open source could work only if the user base is huge. You can already add and release any feature to GD by making extensions, but the only user here I have seen so for who released any extensions is Victor.

Well, in my opinion doesn’t matter if the features are clones if they are nicely implemented in GD.
The weakness of Construct 2 compared to GD in my opinion is limitation. In Construct 2, you are limited when, where, which conditions, actions and expressions you can use. You can’t use any of them any time, anywhere. You are limited in Construct 2. Sure you can get used to it, but I prefer and Love GD mainly, because you are not limited. You can use any condition, any action, any expression, anytime, anywhere. As a result I can make a prototype of anything in GD a lot quicker and more convenient compared to Construct 2 because I don’t have to work around annoying limitations, only my mistakes. Also, in GD you can change any value of the conditions and actions without need to edit the whole event. In Construct 2, if you want to change a value or expression or object, you have to edit the whole condition and action for every event one by one.
GD handle the variables, objects, expressions, events and values a lot more flexible way. This is the main reason why I prefer GD.
In short, GD is a lot more flexible, faster, and less limited compared to Construct 2 in terms of workflow. And even there are 3 people behind C2 and need to pay for it to unlock limitations, GD has something that C2 don’t. Yes, the Linux editor and also networking feature to make multiplayer game on native platform and dynamic lighting, 3D objects and unlimited number of events, layers, scenes and extensions compared to free version of C2. Though C2 is better in terms of features especially for HTML5 and with 3 developer behind C2, they can implement new features and improvements a lot faster than 4ian on his own.

C2 is a very strong competitor I’m not sure if even can be called as a competitor, maybe better to call GD as a free alternative, a very good one, but still need to improve at some point to be a competitor and be able to grow the community. A kickstarter or indigogo campaign can be a good start, but there is one more thing that need to take in to account and need to be considered. As far as I know 4ian is a student. So the implementation of new features, not only money question. Also free time and experience.
So, if 4ian decide to ask for money to implement features, he also need to consider to stop his education to work on GD in full time to implement the funded features in time, and if there are any area his not familiar with, he also need to employ people and run a company (if funded) which is not necessarily something he want at least right now.

16

well one strategy is to do what Ton Rosentaal did- public funding to open source it. Then use the funding money to create a foundation. The foundation organizes yearly projects with gamedevelop- they dont have to be open source at all- in fact the products of each yearly project can be sold to earn money for the foundation.

Every yearly project is a game created with GD - demonstrating it’s commercial capability, released to the public- as a demo and a paid version. Before being ready, the public can preorder it, preorder learning videos on how it was made and even some of the project files - on a CD/digital download.

What’s important here is that a yearly project should not be taken as a demo. It should be both artistically and technically a good game- worth funding/buying. And every GD foundation project item can be used as reward tiers- appearing on both indiegogo and (we will find a way) kickstarter as well.

Does it have to be yearly? It can be done as a monthly gamejam event - for smaller games. Best of all- big part of funding could go to the engine development. And the projects test the engine’s limits and get new things in it to meet them.

:smiley: That way you have your door open to OS developers. You have an annual (or even monthly) funding campaign going and actual GD related awards to offer - not just t-shirts. Best of all- you can say that you are open source. You are the good guy- so the money will go into improving the engine which everyone benefits from. Not just the indie game made with it or the tutorial.

Placing an open sourced GD on steam can follow Krita’s example- sell the steam version of the engine for money, even though the actual software is open source. Open source does not mean that it can not sell. But it takes it one step above “freeware” in terms of humanitarian.

This strategy would of course need a lot of campaigning and I won’t lie- it is a gamble- just as any other dramatic change.
The reason I am writing it is to put an example of how to take a totally different approach than scirra’s. Oh one more thing- there are different types of open source licenses. So if you ever go that path - research them very very carefully.

Even if not open sourced- consider the idea of gamedevelop game jam events. We need actual games to show off in the engine- stuff on the market. The demos are not enough. Or at least- there should be some real gameplay on the table.

17

whereas to develop extensions for Clickteam’s Multimedia Fusion 2 (SDK for Clickteam Fusion isn’t released yet AFAIK), you only need to download this file: clickteam.com/webftp/files/m … MF2SDK.zip and you are done.

18

that is actually a good point. Less effort to get started always makes an engine more welcoming.

Another thing that I noticed is the name. If you ever consider relicensing or doing a big step for a change with this engine, please also consider changing the name to something more unique than “gamedevelop”.
When you google search for tutorials, your results get mixed with a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with the engine. :smiley:

On the topic of open source and proprietary-
you can look into NOVEL (SUSE and Open suse) and Redhat (redhat enterprise and fedora core)- both companies making business of open source technology- offering two versions of their distros.

19

(Even if I do not make large answers, I carefully read each of your answers and I greatly appreciate them! :slight_smile: )

I think that an alternative business model to the classical one (i.e: A paid software with a free limited version) is indeed more adapted to what I want. I do not want to limit users or let them use a not complete software.

Maybe releasing the software as open source after a fund raising project would be interesting. Even if the SDK need the developer to download some libraries, the sources are pretty well organized and so it won’t be a major problem in the case GD goes open source.
Having enough money to create a foundation to support the software would be of course absolutely perfect : I could then hire one or more developers and create some game jams with rewards :slight_smile:

Note that if GD goes open source, I’ll choose a license like the GNU GPL to ensure that no one will be able to create a paid clone of GD without, at least, sharing its own source code.

Your examples are really interesting.
I really want to find a nice approach that is both profitable and that does not limit users.

20

That would be a very exciting route to take, as there is not one open source 2d game engine that has the set of features that gamedevelop has - and the ability to export to html5. Having the gnu license means that anyone building on top of gamedevelop is forced to contribute their code back to it- as open source. There are other types of open source licenses that allows for closed source forks too- but that has it’s disadvantages of course.

Recently Godot made a big splash by going open source:
godotengine.org/wp/
Their engine is very powerful and has a built in cut out animation editor. It does export to html5 as well.
A big selling point for them is that it is “industry proven” and it is backed by a studio - they make money from games made with the engine.
It is however not friendly to non-programmers. Even for programmers -you have to learn a new scripting language specific to the engine. Can’t use LUA or C#.

When you pitch your engine (on steam or funding campaigns,etc) , always look at all the existing alternatives and find what sets you apart feature wise. And in the pitch (if for funding) mention goals that you anticipate people would love to fund (like more stability on linux or a mac port).
Remind people of a problem that the engine solves- like Leadwerks guy did. He kept repeating- hey do you wanna make games on linux, for linux and any other platform. Well, you can’t do that currently. We are going to fix that! Help me get leadwerks ported! In the steam promo video he keeps nailing on the point how easy it is to do programming in it (even though it isn’t- you have to learn LUA first) and he keeps mentioning how his engine is especially made to also help the steam folk who are indie devs. :unamused: He gets to know his target audience and makes the pitch specifically for them - in his case linux users and steam users. Currently linux+steam is very hot for indie developers. SteamOS is turning heads towards porting games to linux. So his timing to serve that pitch was perfect.

I try to help by supplying information from the web - history examples from other products. :smiley:

You can ofcourse go proprietary with a next gen version - like scirra did with construct2. But looking at their past, they did that after they had a huge user base on the open source construct1.