I would say the nethack dev team/community institution is a lot more valuable to me than any for-profit dev corporation dev team/ community institution, in a qualitatively different way. Company makes a nice game, cool, fine. Open-source community makes a game- oh, that's something that will last.
Having more fun and forks than any propietary game could dream.
Nethack/Slashem will be there forever.
A lot of games will be lost due to DRM like Starforce, where even running then under a VM and a crack is not granted gameplay.
OTOH, on libre games with propietary data, a lot of then are having lots of earnings with GOG and for example, ScummVM and open engines running unnoficially under Linux and OSX.
With ScummVM you can buy lots of adventures and now even some games like the ones from the Ultima saga up to VI are perfectly playable, (and integrating Exult for VII is not a big task).
In a near future, engines like Little Big Adventure will be playable under ScummVM.
GOG isn't perfect. Rights holders are still keeping plenty of niche games inaccessible to most. You can check the wishlist on GOG itself to see the latent demand.
All that said, the market compensation for fully FOSS games (assets+code) is a drop in the bucket compared to proprietary games.
"Do very well" in a community and business sense are two very, very different things.
I would say the nethack dev team/community institution is a lot more valuable to me than any for-profit dev corporation dev team/ community institution, in a qualitatively different way. Company makes a nice game, cool, fine. Open-source community makes a game- oh, that's something that will last.
Sure. My point was more that they're two very different, and not really comparable things.
So what is their current business revenue?
Having more fun and forks than any propietary game could dream. Nethack/Slashem will be there forever.
A lot of games will be lost due to DRM like Starforce, where even running then under a VM and a crack is not granted gameplay.
OTOH, on libre games with propietary data, a lot of then are having lots of earnings with GOG and for example, ScummVM and open engines running unnoficially under Linux and OSX.
With ScummVM you can buy lots of adventures and now even some games like the ones from the Ultima saga up to VI are perfectly playable, (and integrating Exult for VII is not a big task). In a near future, engines like Little Big Adventure will be playable under ScummVM.
GOG isn't perfect. Rights holders are still keeping plenty of niche games inaccessible to most. You can check the wishlist on GOG itself to see the latent demand.
All that said, the market compensation for fully FOSS games (assets+code) is a drop in the bucket compared to proprietary games.
What do I care? The games exist, the proof is in the pudding.