[Talk] Making FOSS games for fun and (hopefully) profit
03. April 2025
This are just the bullet points to my talk. A video will be uploaded to YouTube a few days after the talk and the link will be added here. When that happened, I will also extend every point with what I said during the talk.
You can find this blog post with the short url
s9i.org/dt25
Let's make some FOSS games!
About me
Childhood dreams since Nintendo Game Boy
2017 libGDX, 3 mobile games in 3 years.
2020 Godot Engine 2 games and working on first FOSS commercial game.
- Pocket Broomball
- Ball2Box
- 99 Managers Futsal Edition (still in beta)
Total of 6 games in 7 years (2024) using a 2 different tools.
Problems with most games
Most players are children
Ads and user tracking...
even without personal data consent
Micro-transactions and loot boxes
EU press release about protecting children from harmful practices
Freemium games...
...where tiny fraction of players pay thousands of Euros per month
Down the rabbit hole it can get alarming...
Game development job market
My knowledge is based on web
Lower pay than rest of industry
High work hours aka crunch time
Working in games industry seen as a privilege
No jobs in South Tyrol
Remote really difficult
Why FOSS games
Kiwi Free Software CD
FOSS games for future developers
Get quality feedback
Get contributions
Free access to paid tools like Weblate
Free access to the game
All problems magically disappear
Game engines
2024 Unity introduces 0.20$ install fee for games with over 1M downloads.
List of game engines on Wikipedia
Two main categories libraries/frameworks and full engines
...as libGDX and Godot Engine
Free (as in free speech) assets
kenney.nl 2D, 3D and audio, all CC0
opengameart.org 2D, 3D and audio, multiple licenses
freesound.org audio, multiple licenses
Licenses and Trademarks
Source code
permissive MIT, Apache
weak copyleft MPL, LGPL
strong copyleft GPL, AGPL
Assets
public domain CC0
attribution CC-BY
attribution and share alike CC-BY-SA
Reuse tool to keep track of licenses
Trademarks to protect name and branding
Game distribution platforms
F-Droid
Flathub
itch.io
Steam
Google Play Store
Apple App Store
FOSS business models
No business, just fun
Donations
Sell desktop games platforms like Steam
with free versions on all other platforms
like Mindustry, game-stats.com
Guerilla marketing
Write blog if you like writing
Or make videos
FOSS lists...
awesome-godot
fossdroid
fossgaming
Niche games bring natural visibility
My game development advice
Start with small games
Make web or desktop games
No gaming computer/laptop is needed
Participate in game jams
online on itch.io
or offline like castle game jam or the dung game jam
99 Managers roadmap
2025 release Futsal Edition on Steam and other platforms
2025 SFSCon talk proposal
2026 adapt code for other team sport
2027 and many other team sports
2030 ALL team sports ;-)
...plans are made to be broken.
99 Managers
Now let's play 99 Managers Futsal Edition
Every feedback is welcome
Feel free to write me an email at info@simondalvai.org
