Have you ever bought a free game?

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In honor of today's Steam release of 40-year-old roguelike Rogue, we here at The Poll Base want to hear from YOU!

[Flack]

I'm pretty sure I bought some of Robb's games, even though they were available for free download.

I'm buying Rogue for the convenience of being able to play it on Steam. The original doesn't run natively on newer (64-bit) machines, which means I have to fire up DOSBox to play it. It'll be easier just to play it inside Steam. Plus as a kid I used to always say "sure I pirate games, but if I *like* it enough, I'll *BUY* it." I guess after 40 years, Epyx* earned my five bucks.

(*$0 of the $5 will be going to Epyx.)

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Great poll. I got THOUGHTS.

Not only have I paid money for ostensibly free games, but I have paid money to Kickstarters to absolute scamming dickwads who never had an intention of finishing their game.

I think the current tally of games that got tons of money and the authors just, YA KNOW, lost interest in doing the thing they were supposed to do is:

"Order of the Thorne" & "Roehm To Ruin" by Infamous Quests ($31,000 to make three games. They actually released one. I have no idea why they announced they were making three games, but that's Kickstarter for you.)

"Dungeons of Aledorn". This one was just plain a scam, the assholes produced nothing and then said they were "splitting" with one of the people in their fake Czech company, tee hee no refunds though.

But that was an earlier time, when I didn't understand the role of publishers. None of us did. I can't imagine ever supporting a Kickstarter again.

But otherwise we got some good situations out there where anyone with empathy would throw a few bucks a developer's way. itch.io has downloads that are free with a suggested price and I try to always give the suggested price. And like Flack said, I pirated the hell out of games when I was a kid, paying for them now seems right even though nobody who worked on Rogue will get a single penny I bet.

The indie game scene is messed up enough to where it doesn't make sense to NOT charge, though. I put Cryptozookeeper on Steam (the free version is out there somewhere, which is necessary because it is licensed Creative Commons) because there were a series of barriers put up by smooth brains when it came to indie games where you couldn't get considered for whatever they were pulling unless you were selling it. The itch.io bundle for racial justice or whatever it was called was one such thing - they were only including games for sale in the giant bundle they did. Indie games are pretty messed up. I hope everyone walks away [checks notes] most everyone walks away with an understanding of that.

I'll buy Rogue when it comes out because it does cost money to get a game on Steam and Steam is the only thing out there with a decent and seamless solution for games that work on different operating systems. Whoever put it on Steam also deserves money because of how awful Steam is for developers.

[Flack]

Pixel Games, the company behind the Mini64 and TheC64, is who put it on Steam. I'm not sure how the acquired the rights to Epyx's games.

[Billy Mays]

Yes, similar to Flack, at some point the free game becomes cheap enough on a platform that it becomes worth the nominal fee for the added conveniences they provide.

Also, I have donated a few dollars every now and then to different modding communities and their members for fixing a broken, bugged out, and unplayable mess of an otherwise outstanding game even if their mods and fixes are free to download.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Does this SATISFY YOU, poll maker?

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