Not "selling", just donations...

[Technocrat]

Musing about the potential issues of going commercial with games, and understanding my own limitations, I was wondering about the various ways of profiting from games. It is, currently, beyond me to set up a website with an e-shop capable of taking credit-card details and distributing copies of a game. I wouldn't expect nearly enough traffic for something like that, either. However, my line  of thinking was "donors who give more than £x will receive an extra bonus game". Both the optimist and the slacker within me believe that this is a straightforward enough system, e-mailing the game to those who've made such a donation. Although, that caused me to raise a couple of potential issues in my brain:

- does this count as a "sale" legally? That is, are there going to be complications over MP3 format and such that there would be if it were being sold through a website?

-does anyone else act like this already?

I'm sure Yahtzee did a similar thing with "director's cut" versions of his games, too.

[Igor Hardy]

Maybe this will be of interest to you - there is a new indie games shop that's been activated a few days ago called Indievania:

http://beta.indievania.com/

It's a modest thing, but it's run by the creators of the pretty cool commercial indie game Capsized, which makes it pretty cool in my eyes too.

Anyway, the proprietors don't even mind, if you sell your freeware games in their shop for o modest amount as a form of collecting donations. In fact I've put Snakes of Avalon as an experiment in there (priced at 1$).

Some more prestigious digital shops for indies that you could look into include Desura, and the soon to be premiering IndieCity (which you can already sign up to).

[KodiakBehr]

These days, setting up an e-shop is half as difficult as it used to be.  Between PayPal and Google Checkout, just about anybody can start up with very limited risk.

That said, if you still don't want the hassle of managing a hobby business, I would suggest seeking partnerships with those who are already established with e-commerce infrastructure, particularly for AGS games.

Regarding the legal definition of "sale", you're probably safe, but it really depends on the laws of your country.  My advice is to do what I did -- marry a lawyer.

[monkey0506]

Here's a fun thought (from a non-lawyer)...in the US it's illegal for any person who is not a certified, licensed lawyer to even give formal legal advice. You could dance around with that wording if you like, but what it amounts to is that if your buddy gives you legal advice that puts you in some hot water, you have legal grounds to file suit against him.

Anyway, I'm fairly certain that, at least in the US where I'm from, that it all depends on the wording of the licensing agreement. So long as the license explicitly states it as "freeware" that must not be sold under the terms of the license, then collecting donations in exchange for distribution of said freeware, again, under explicit written agreement that the funds are for donation purposes and that the software is not being purchased, should be fine. Of course that's a bit of non-formal non-advice from a non-lawyer. So if any negative consequence comes from this information, it's your own fault for believing it.

However, if any positive consequence comes out of it, then I claim a fee of 0.00001% of all proceeds. 8)

[Technocrat]

Hm...pretty much as I thought, then. Thanks for the pointers about the indie websites though, they'd probably be a lot easier to get it done through.

Since I'm looking into the issues of potentially going commercial, I was wondering another thing - AGS' compatability with things. While I'm sure that it works with most things (at least, those that have Windows newer than WinME), is there anything that is known for certain that AGS games will not work with? Things like MacOS, or Linux, or somesuch. I think having angry purchasers not being able to play would be quite an obstacle.