What's the license? dual-licensed: GPL version 2 or later and CC-BY-SA?
I'd say you're asking the wrong group of people for permission. You should be asking the people mentioned in the AUTHORS file. Or maybe just inform them, because I think generally you're right. Seems they specifically licensed it CC-BY-SA. So you need to attribute. But they gifted it to you, including for commercial purposes.
And maybe you give something to them. Like a free key for your game?!
why not give those who buy the game a copy of the source code?
For a legal point of view, you should consult a lawyer. Using those assets could impose obligations on you. From a general vibes feeling, make sure you at least acknowledge those contributors. Make an effort to link to them if they have an online presence and want the attention.
I think you are going to get all sorts of comments, there is no single voice for the community, right?
That said, I think so long as you follow the actual licenses and give an explicit shout-out, it would be malevolent of people to actually go after you.
A few others have mentioned the same, but I agree it seems you are conflating a game being FOSS with it needing to be free.
I make FOSS games with my wife, because I believe in the rights it grants the player/user of the software.
The code and assets are available to those it matters to, but for the vast majority of people who just want to play the game, they can buy a precompiled build on Steam or Itch.io, allowing us to get some support to. (Though in our case, our short coming is marketing leaving us stuck at 9 reviews and barely any sales regardless)
But strictly to your question if for some reason you still don't want to open source your work, yes as long as you follow the license with reasonable attribution and such I don't see an issue with it, that's why things are open sourced and not given a NC/non-commercial license.
You can be foss and make money by charging for it directly. It's fine if you don't want to but of course we'd all be happy if you did.
Sure, people can just download it easily, but they could do exactly that before with piracy.
Not hard to make it foss if you wrote all the code either. Just bundle the code with the game. Trust me, nobody on itch or steam who would have bought it won't because it's foss. Many more might if it is.
Lastly yeah they would have picked another license if they didn't want their assets used in that fashion. Abide by the license that's how they've given you permission.
Good luck anyhow I hope success for your game.
Even if the underlying game is nothing like SuperTux, using assets from a well-known FOSS game in a commercial project will probably put a lot of people off, which will hurt sales. You'd be better off finding some other assets for your game. Open Game Art has plenty for free, and while you'll likely have to pay for the ones on itch.io they're still pretty cheap.
Can you make it "free to play", but offer some cosmetic/premium thing? Like a highscore ranking you can only be counted in when you unlock it and/or your character gets a crown or something.
A lot of folks who develop games on itch.io use a "name your own price" model where it's free by default, but people can opt to pay whatever they want before or after download. This could provide imo sufficient moral exculpation while still leaving the door open for making money from the project.
you could offer the game on itch because they allow to add a tip (and an optional minimum amount). Most platforms also dont stop you from oss+paid and even with being propritary+paid there is no guarantee people will buy it or when that you break even.
You could also try to sell the game for the first years and then open source it when its either clear that nobody pays or when it did make enough money.
While I am also a FOSS evangelist, I don't get people who insist on open-source games. It feels similar to asking movie makers to publish their Kdenlive or Blender project files.
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