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Comment by clarry | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone else feel at least a little betrayed?

I bought Minecraft quite early, back when it wasn't such a big hit. Normally I do not buy games. But I'm all for free & open source games, and back then what the site said read or at least felt like a personal promise to eventually release the code. That is why I bought Minecraft. The game looked interesting, and I wanted to contribute to (eventual) open source gaming. I wouldn't have paid for it otherwise... and no, I don't actually play Minecraft.

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> Does anyone else feel at least a little betrayed?

No. I bought the game (cheap), I played it a bunch, I enjoyed it. They have no further obligations to me.

Seems like you bought it for a very silly reason! I bought it because it was a game I wanted to play. I think I spent $14 on the pre-alpha? The first 20 minutes of playing that game (which turned into probably 15 hours over that weekend) alone were worth $14.

Am I also silly for having donated money to some open source projects?

What about the people who back to-be-released-as-free-software projects on kickstarter or such, are they silly?

I might be silly. I know, I'm not like everyone else. :-)

But hopefully there are more silly people like me.

>Am I also silly for having donated money to some open source projects?

No. Because they are open source. Minecraft was not. Vague platitudes about someday being open source are worthless. Notch is notoriously dishonest and would say or do anything to push minecraft early on. Look how quickly he jumped from 4chan being his only customers to "4chan is the worst thing ever right reddit!?".

I'm sorry, but I share the idea that it's a silly reason. Paying for closed source software to contribute to open source gaming? I don't understand that. It's different than say, downloading Ubuntu and donating $20. With one you're saying "I enjoy this free product, take $20 to help continue development." With the other, you're telling them it's ok to not provide it for free, and you'll gladly pay for it.

I bought Minecraft for what it was, and still is, a sandbox game that I've had hundreds of hours of fun in. I've bought it for several friends of mine for the same reason. But I won't buy something because of the chance it might become something I want, when it currently isn't. (I learned that lesson when pre-purchasing Spore).

Actually the intended message was that I'll gladly pay for it since you promised to make it free. But I guess the message gets lost and this is another reason why voting with one's wallet doesn't work.

We're still looking for a way to fund free games. And I don't think donations work too well. More importantly, the people who actually make games don't seem to find it working too well, because they are not making free donation-supported games. On the other hand, many game authors already see the value in eventually freeing their work. So if they promise to do that, it is a reasonably effective way of getting a free game by first helping them do what it takes to make it profitable enough to actually build and finish the game and eat something too. Is it not?

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