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Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

monogame.net

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Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#141

Post by LaffertyDev »

yunnpp wrote: post #94
tracker1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% off the top for most stores (Valve/Steam, Apple/iPhone, Google/Android, etc), then around 50% taxes between state, local... some fixed expenses and overhead. It's probably well under 20% in the bank after all is said and done. That said, it's still a lot of money.

God, that's awful. That 30% cut for the middle man hurts. At least the government tax can be put to good use (emphasis on can ...)

Stardew likely qualifies for the reduced store cuts. Steam _lowers_ the percentage for a game when it sells high. Still somewhere between 10 and 25%, though.

Generally, the Steam cut is considered “fair” for Indy devs. The benefits of steam (discoverability, massive audience) generate more sales. My Indy dev friends are not upset about the steam cut at all.

This, however, is one area where eventually Epic Games shines — they take a much lower cut and if they increase in popularity with gamers then steam might be forced to lower their share.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#142

Post by rvnx »

sneak wrote: post #112
mjg2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think ConcernedApe is actually genuine with his charity and we should see this as a standard for corporations to follow.

Charitable donations that are self-serving aren’t non-genuine. The money still spends the same.

Look, it's really nice that you maintained WooCommerce for so many years.

I know you might be tempted to move on to do something else, but I really need my shop to keep working.

So, here is the deal: I am going to send you a 'donation' of 500 USD now, and then a monthly recurring 'gift.'

Contractually? You have no obligation to work, and I have no obligation to pay.

But if you stop working on WooCommerce, I will obviously have to stop the donations.

Sounds cool?

==

The output of that is rather positive here though, but it would be naive to not see the self-interest.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#143

Post by MajorBee »

yunnpp wrote: post #94
tracker1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% off the top for most stores (Valve/Steam, Apple/iPhone, Google/Android, etc), then around 50% taxes between state, local... some fixed expenses and overhead. It's probably well under 20% in the bank after all is said and done. That said, it's still a lot of money.

God, that's awful. That 30% cut for the middle man hurts. At least the government tax can be put to good use (emphasis on can ...)

In this case, as a solo dev, it's probably quite justified to be honest. I doubt ConcernedApe would have really been able to continue solo-ing it with this level of success if he also had to maintain distribution channels, sales/returns, marketing, legal stuff on a global scale.

It's probably the big name studios who already have entire departments to do that kind of stuff that feel they're being ripped off.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#144

Post by zinekeller »

kuylar wrote: post #136
thrownawaysz wrote: post #124

>MonoGame is free to use on all platforms from the public repository, but the code for supporting console platforms is only accessible to authorized console developers. >These platforms are provided as private code repositories that add integrations with the console vendor's APIs and platform-specific documentation. https://docs.monogame.net/articles/console_access.html How can something be open source and closed at…

In the same page, > The MonoGame Foundation cannot directly give anyone access to the private console repositories without prior approval from the vendor due to NDA requirements set out by each vendor. Blame here goes to Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft (though I'm not so sure about Microsoft) This also applies to Godot, another open source game engine, which doesn't have any code for console support on its upstream repo…

> though I'm not so sure about Microsoft

GDK is open-source (https://github.com/microsoft/gdk), but to be fair there is a possibility that there are some parts under NDA.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#145

Post by gmueckl »

mikepurvis wrote: post #91
orthoxerox wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is basically correct. When you start writing a game with MonoGame, all you get is basically a class with two methods, Update() and Draw() that MonoGame will be calling in a loop, plus a bunch of libraries for input, graphics, audio, content loading etc. you can use in your code. It's a step beyond something like bare raylib or SDL2, but it's a far cry from Unreal, which lets you think in terms of game entit…

I think a lot comes down to whether a game is art-first or code-first, and almost all modern games are art-first, so it makes sense to have your platform be one that artists and designers are immediately productive in, and the software people are basically writing behaviour modules and plugins for that established system. But it's good that code-first engines still exist. There are always going to be projects that ar…

This is a somewhat naive view of engines in modern game development. Full-featured engines allow every department to dive in head first in parallel. The first gameplay elements often get programmed before the first pieces of content arrive. Scenes can be blocked out and drafted immwdiately at the start of the project. Complex animations with states and blend trees can be created amd tested independently of the gameplay code. Audio scenes, complex cues and (dynamic) music can be mixed and mastered independently of any code to integrate audio into the game. The whole process is highly parallelized these days and the engine tools serve to insulate the departments from one another to some extent so that everybody can move faster.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#146

Post by Kye »

sneak wrote: post #111
mindcrash wrote: post #101

Not without reason: Stardew Valley, which has been sold to millions of gamers, has been created using the free MonoGame engine. So ConcernedApe is giving back to the open source software which made his commercial success possible, like commercial parties should.

Gifts do not confer obligation. Copying deprives the original party of nothing. Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”. This idea that anyone making money with free software somehow owes the original authors anything (or “should” donate a portion of their profits) is ridiculous. If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead o…

What is this, the lawyer planet from Farscape? You shouldn't need a contract to be prosocial.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#147

Post by Steve6 »

firefax wrote: post #71
juujian wrote: post #2

I don't want to assume, but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios (spare Valve). This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame.

>I don't want to assume, but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios (spare Valve). This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame. Despite all the talk from libertarians about how private donations are the solution to the world's ills, open source software very rarely gets substantial donations.

Libertarians don't claim that they have "the solution to the world's ills". Just that the government is causing worse problems than it solves, and generally those problems can be handled by a free market.

We're already being taxed like crazy while that money subsidizes things almost everyone disagrees with. The libertarians believe that if people weren't taxed as much they could voluntarily spend money on things that are valuable to them. Some people would donate more and others wouldn't donate at all, and that's okay. I believe we would see a lot more voluntary donations without the burden of high taxes.

Claiming "libertarians haven't solved this yet" while continuing to take everyone's money is not a fair argument.

To stay on topic, this thread is about a private individual donating to a project he supports. That's something everyone should be happy about. And he did not do it as a political statement.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#148

Post by drnick1 »

sneak wrote: post #111
mindcrash wrote: post #101

Not without reason: Stardew Valley, which has been sold to millions of gamers, has been created using the free MonoGame engine. So ConcernedApe is giving back to the open source software which made his commercial success possible, like commercial parties should.

Gifts do not confer obligation. Copying deprives the original party of nothing. Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”. This idea that anyone making money with free software somehow owes the original authors anything (or “should” donate a portion of their profits) is ridiculous. If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead o…

There is no obligation, but since they find the project useful and are making money from it, they want to make sure it is not abandoned. The best way to ensure that is to fund its development.

This also gives them direct access to the devs and can request new features or bug fixes that impact them to be prioritized. Everyone benefits. It's probably much cheaper to make a contribution than to do that in house and upstream the changes.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#149

Post by benoau »

tempest_ wrote: post #140
yunnpp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, that's awful. That 30% cut for the middle man hurts. At least the government tax can be put to good use (emphasis on can ...)

Gabe gotta buy a $500 million dollar yacht. It pays to be the middle man!

The yacht and the company that makes it. Plus like 10 other ships. His fleet probably employs more people than Steam lmao.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#150

Post by hnbad »

sneak wrote: post #111
mindcrash wrote: post #101

Not without reason: Stardew Valley, which has been sold to millions of gamers, has been created using the free MonoGame engine. So ConcernedApe is giving back to the open source software which made his commercial success possible, like commercial parties should.

Gifts do not confer obligation. Copying deprives the original party of nothing. Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”. This idea that anyone making money with free software somehow owes the original authors anything (or “should” donate a portion of their profits) is ridiculous. If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead o…

Not under capitalism, sure. But traditionally gift economies worked exactly because people understood that gifts also imbue a burden of responsibility. Not necessarily in repayment but to honor the gift and pay the good deed forward instead of simply enriching yourself.
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