> Imagine if the gamers of the world stood up in unison and demanded free
software, lest they stop purchasing their stuff.
Yes, but the important part of that thought experiment is if. It's not going
to happen. As far as I am aware, there has never, throughout history, been
any case of any particularly massive group of people refusing to take part in
culture because of some objection to it.
Small groups of people like us doing this are not going to affect change. The
big publishers will not be hurt by it. In fact, I am confident that our
community is not a valuable market for video games at all. Given the lack of
libre games available, a serious gamer is either going to lose interest in
gaming, or make a special exception for games. Well, if you've lost interest
in gaming, then you're not going to start buying up games like candy again
just because they're becoming libre. You might do that out of a sense of
charity or activism a few times, but you're going to stop before long, either
because you lose interest or because you feel it's no longer necessary.
The only way social activism is ever going to change the behavior of
publishers is if two things happen: first, a vast majority of the population
would need to agree with us; and second, a large number of high-quality libre
games would need to be available to choose from. The chance of both of these
happening any time soon is quite small.
> Refusing to buy proprietary games is better than sitting at home and saying
"Oh gee, well, sigh, I *wish* it were free..." and that being the end of it
as some have said in this thread. That sort of stuff will not get anything
changed.
I guess, but being "better" does not render that strategy effective. I say
the most effective strategy isn't refusing to play games; it's putting effort
into libre game development. We're not going to change the video game
publishers, but we can compete with them to some extent as indie developers.
It would also be really helpful to win over indie developers, and that's why
I think development of powerful, copylefted game engines is a particularly
useful thing to do.
What I would especially like is a company dedicated to publishing libre
games, probably non-profit to avoid corruption. Even if it were a small
publisher, it would be of substantial help to libre game developers, would
help to get out libre games that can compete better with proprietary games,
and could also attract some proprietary indie game developers over.
