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Update: Valve has now taken it down.


Here's a "fun" one for you. The developers behind the free and open source RTS named 0 A.D. (pronounced “zero-ey-dee”) have announced that someone (they don't know who) has put it up on Steam.

This is sometimes the perils of open source, as there's a lot of people out their looking to make a quick-buck and they don't care who they burn in the process. To be clear, the version of 0 A.D. that has released on Steam (with it missing the second dot in the name), is not actually from the people who make the game — even though Wildfire Games are listed as the developer on Steam it's not them. Confusing right? Valve allowed it and approved it, so it does make me curious what legal checks are even done for this to happen.

I was notified of this on Twitter, with the official 0 A.D. account tweeting:

Turns out the only reason @YouTube added the game back is because somebody uploaded 0 A.D. to  @Steam without our consent. It also explains the typo in the name…

Another tweet sent today by the 0 A.D. team:

IMPORTANT: The person who released the game on steam today is charging 8€ for it. Please do not buy it. The game is free and always will be. It might contain viruses and other malware.

I imagine it doesn't have anything nefarious inside it, otherwise you really would have to wonder what Valve are doing…

Looking on the official game forum there's a topic asking about it, the developers seems to be at a loss as to what is happening.

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StalePopcorn Oct 20, 2022
Charlatans!
wurschti Oct 20, 2022
can we even report it?
TheSHEEEP Oct 20, 2022
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That's a VERY cheap asset flip of whoever did that.
Not stupid, I gotta say - they might even make a few bucks before it gets pulled.

Why don't the actual devs put it on Steam, though?
Mindustry is a great example that a game can both be free and sold on Steam by the same people.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 20 October 2022 at 2:56 pm UTC
Kuduzkehpan Oct 20, 2022
Quoting: TheSHEEEPThat's a VERY cheap asset flip of whoever did that.
Not stupid, I gotta say - they might even make a few bucks before it gets pulled.

Why don't the actual devs put it on Steam, though?
Mindustry is a great example that a game can both be free and sold on Steam by the same people.

İ totally agree with this. Also 0 A D isnt open source game ? so what is the problem here ? i dont get it really.
dziadulewicz Oct 20, 2022
Maybe this will speed up the process on getting 0 A.D. officially by the developers to Steam. I mean it's astounding it's not there yet still officially. Why not?

People game on Steam on Linux and expect to find most of their needs just there now. In this day and age any tinkering getting a game to launch is a huge no. Click Play and game. Or not.

That said, SuperTux does not launch on Linux in Steam because its a AppImage package and problems related to that. It's quite ironic that SuperTux does not work OOTB on Linux
psymin Oct 20, 2022
Looks like the 0 A.D. folks ran into a similar issue that the MultiMC folks ran into.

Overly permissive licensing that allows people to do things with it that they didn't anticipate.

It is unfortunate.
KohlyKohl Oct 20, 2022
They couldn't even be bothered to upload the Linux version
slaapliedje Oct 20, 2022
Quoting: dziadulewiczMaybe this will speed up the process on getting 0 A.D. officially by the developers to Steam. I mean it's astounding it's not there yet still officially. Why not?

People game on Steam on Linux and expect to find most of their needs just there now. In this day and age any tinkering getting a game to launch is a huge no. Click Play and game. Or not.

That said, SuperTux does not launch on Linux in Steam because its a AppImage package and problems related to that. It's quite ironic that SuperTux does not work OOTB on Linux
This brings up a curiosity. Could developers get a game 'into Steam' but Steam essentially just installs the flatpak version, or distribution packaged version? Seeing as how most distributions have 0 A.D. in them. Then again, I can also see reasons why developers wouldn't want to put them into Steam either. Granted another possibility (mind you this loses a lot of discoverability) is to have distributions put in a post-install script that adds their games to the Steam UI if it's detected. That'd be rather interesting...
elmapul Oct 20, 2022
while anyone can distribute FOSS games, the name should be trademarked to prevent stuff like this from happening...
there is nothing wrong with forking and charging for it, so long you respect the licence...
mrdeathjr Oct 20, 2022
In my case only use game from oibaff ppa, in last times stay testing with zink too for fun

OpenGL



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIwQc78ivJc

Zink



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_srMw2PW81g




Last edited by mrdeathjr on 20 October 2022 at 3:35 pm UTC
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