monetization - Is there any way to earn money with an open source game?

I know FreeToPlay games are financed by advertisements and/or selling additional content, but what about an Open Source single player game to which several people have contributed? And how can a fair sharing be determined?

Answer

I would suggest that you sell:

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  Distributions of the source: Build versions of the source code, tools, etc that people can work with. If they are modifying the source themselves then this won't help them, but if they just want to include a dll for example, this can simply things especially if your build process is complex. Another options is to sell incremental revisions of the source and open source previous versions.

  
  


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  Art, Basic Levels, etc: As mentioned above, providing art resources and building block maps, objects, and other assets simplify development for others.

  
  


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  Server Rental: If your game is an open source multiplayer game, you can rent out time on servers you run. This makes supporting the game easier for people building off of your game, and ensures stability (this relies on you of course) for multiplayer games.

  
  



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  Advertising: A no brainer, advertising on your site and support forums could earn you something

  
  


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  Support: While I generally view selling support as evil, perhaps selling room in online training sessions, access to advanced tutorials, or "1 on 1"-ish support wouldn't be so bad (likely more like 1-or-2-on-team but hopefully you get the idea).

  
  


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  Microtransactions: You could sell content in game, or only provide certain content in the "premium" version of the game that YOU built. People building off of the game would have to either go without said content or pay you to include it.

  
  


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  Commercial Licences: While your game could be open sourced for non-commerical purposes, you could require that you be paid a certain amount or a cut of the profits for people planning to sell derivatives of your work.

  
  


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  Promotional Items: If your game gets popular enough, you could sell T-Shirts, etc relating to the original game.

  
  


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  Sponsorship Period: Following along the lines of point 1, you could sell the game for a certain amount of time and THEN open source it.

  
  


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  Donations: Simple--ask for donations to your project (this would probably look bad if you were doing too many of the other things but it may be worth a shot).

  
  
  

I'm sure there are more ways I didn't even think of as well. As for sharing, that's really up to your team and you but as this is an open source project and not something built in a corporate environment it would presumably be split evenly amongst you.