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Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame
- juujian 10mo agoI don't want to assume, but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios (spare Valve). This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame.
- mpeg 10mo agoStardew is probably one of the most (if not the most) popular game ever made with MonoGame AAA studios don't really use MonoGame.
- willis936 10mo agoTheir point wasn't about MonoGame. Do AAA studios really not use any open source tools?
- NSUserDefaults 10mo agoMany use Dear ImGui for example and some do donate afaik.
- mpeg 10mo agoThey use a lot of open source libraries, yes, but I think it's about how much of the end product depends on the OSS tool/library. Studios using unreal engine probably don't use that much critical OSS directly – their licensed software probably does. And the software vendors / big studios do donate to tools they depend on, for instance Epic Games donated $1.2m to Blender
- PurpleRamen 10mo agoAAA usually goes with AAA-tools and frameworks. So Unity, Unreal Engine or even their own engine. OSS might be used, but for smaller parts or as tools for producing their stuff (like browser, editor, etc.). So while they sometimes donate, there is not much reason to give a big sum to a single project. They might be even donating more overall, but separated on multiple different projects.
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- lostmsu 10mo agoSecond would be Terraria (originally made for XNA).
- oceansky 10mo agoStardew valley was also originally XNA
- wsc981 10mo agoAnother one would be Bastion - code is even open source [0]. --- [0]: https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog/bastions-open-source-branch-for-monogame/ https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog/bastions-open-source-br...
- ZiiS 10mo agoBy sales it is the 17th most popular game accross all systems and all history. But I think Terraria beats it even on Mono
- MangoToupe 10mo ago> This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame. For the hundredth time. He's an extremely rare person focused on quality, value, and competency. And he clearly just loves his own game Edit: Sorry? Pay for what, and risk what why? AAA studios simply cannot deliver good value in comparison. The donation is unrelated—or perhaps, arguably, open source makes this productivity possible.
- rvnx 10mo agoBeyond love, what you prefer ? Pay 100K USD, or put at risk your 500M USD project ? Edit: if the engine is not maintained, there can be compatibility issues, it can go abandoned and lack new features, etc. It's the technical pillar of the product, like Unity.
- vasco 10mo agoIs it so hard to accept someone else might give away money for a charitable reason rather than because of fear?
- rvnx 10mo agoWhen you give money to help a pet shelter, or to feed kids in some far-away location, this is a donation. You give something, and you don't get anything back in return. Even a tax benefit, it doesn't change anything (as at the end you have to pay the same amount of money). But now, what if you "donate" to a public park across the street from your house: Is it charity? Yes, you are giving money to the city/trust that you don't have to give. Do you benefit? Yes directly, your property value goes up and you have a nice place to walk. Does that make it "not a donation"? No. It just makes it a smart donation or even sponsoring a project. In all cases he is securing his own supply chain, and for a very cheap price. It is a very rational business expense.
- vasco 10mo agoI really hate that vision of the world with a passion. For people with such opinion nothing is ever enough or pure enough, but if you ask directly such people donate almost nothing themselves. The fact people with this opinion exist also discourages donations from others because "nothing is ever enough" for you. Also pro-tip, if you do more than a handful donations you'll realize that you as the giver is always the one that most benefits from being charitable. The feeling you get is why you do it.
- fourneau 10mo agoDefinitely indie. It was a solo project until launch.
- CuriouslyC 10mo agoIt's an epic story. Grinding on a solo project for 4 years is pretty daunting, I'm glad the universe rewarded him.
- dleslie 10mo agoValve contributes effort to Wine via Proton, and provides open source software like Steam Audio. EA does something similar, and their EASTL is an opinionated and gaming-focused container and algorithms library that they maintain and made open source.
- dcdc123 10mo agoThey’ve also paid tons to Igalia to develop features for them in open source projects.
- LeFantome 10mo agoMany corporations are free-riding on the Open Source they use. As most of us are honestly. But I think people cynically underestimate the value of the contributions corporations do make and fail to understand just how much of the software we enjoy is only possible due to corporate funding. Igalia may be a good example as most of have are not even familiar with them. But the Linux distro that I use comes from their, the Servo browser is being driven by them, and many other projects benefit from their contributions.
- QuantumNomad_ 10mo agoEpic Games has a program called MegaGrants where they give a bunch of money to various projects. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants For example they gave $250k to the Godot game engine project in 2020. https://godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-was-awarded-epic-megagrant/ https://godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-was-awarded-epi...
- badrequest 10mo agoLooks like they did literally nothing in 2024?
- mjg2 10mo agoI wouldn't call anything Epic Games does charity: it's all empire expansion for them.
- raincole 10mo agoSo? What Valve does isn't charity either. It's weird that you even mention this word.
- mjg2 10mo agoWhy is Valve's behavior relevant? I mention charity because that's what donations are. It's no secret Epic Games follows Microsoft's patterns for control of the industry.
- closingreunion 10mo agoHow does the Godot donation expand their empire? Other than get more people into game development?
- mjg2 10mo agoIt expands their empire like Microsoft pledging to "support" Open Source: it's disingenuous, self-serving, and develops a "claim" of authority over the sector. It allows them, the makers of Unreal Engine, to develop a business relationship with their competition and influence the trajectory on one of only major alternatives in order to control the market more. If Epic Games really cared about Godot, they would align more with their values in-house. Their M&A drives the organization like a propeller.
- Aurornis 10mo ago> but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios Epic has a grant program that has given out thousands of grants, including over a million dollars to the Blender project https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants
- zoeysmithe 10mo agoIts hard in a corporate structure to just 'donate.' The culture and system is not designed for it very well. This is why selling books or support works out better for foss projects. Its hard to see SDV as some niche 'indie' project and more and more pedantic definitions of 'indie' aren't helpful. This is a game with an estimated half BILLION in sales. He's extremely wealthy and could have given 50x more easily. Its a bit arbitrary on who or who hasnt done enough. Why no metrics like 10% of your income if you use the tool? "Volunteerism" doesn't work and stuff like this seems like mostly PR and a tip, moreso that "let me help you run this project." I mean does this make monogame better? It seems like a tool that's not really used by any commercial devs. This just seems like a "thank you for helping me get super rich," kind of thing. A tip, which is different than funding a project, fundamentally. You can tip a dying business that is destined to fold shortly, for example. That's not the same as funding it. This sort of "we are and aren't a business" gray-zone these foss projects live in needs reform, imho. Expecting the kindness of strangers doesn't work. Look at how many foss projects get little to no donations. I don't have the fix here but these developers should probably roll up a LLC and market some kind of service these companies can just easily write invoices for instead of just expecting a random middle-manager to fight the execs to write a $100k check to some guy named Phil in Minnesota that maintains something-something-lib, which is one tiny part of a larger ecosystem that maintains their backend.
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- oefrha 10mo agoI mean, this indie developer sold more than lots of (most?) AAA studios, and AAA studios have a lot more operating costs than an indie. Donating one dev year is a lot easier when you sell 50 million copies and hire no one than when you sell a couple million copies and have 100 employees plus investors. (I have 3000 hours on this game, so definitely not biased against indies or something.)
- Zetaphor 10mo agoThese studios have profit margins in the multi-millions, they could afford a symbolic $100k donation. Instead they choose to push their developers through another crunch cycle.
- tapoxi 10mo agoBut ConcernedApe uses Monogame for Stardew Valley, the studios don't use Monogame. Why would they donate?
- oefrha 10mo agoThey typically pay a lot more than $100k for Unreal and the likes or employees working on their in house engines. Oh and these studios often lose money instead of having profit margins in the multi-million, see Ubisoft.
- didip 10mo agoBecause no middle managers will get promoted for doing this. All large corporate structures are the same: What's the incentive for the mini warlords to expand their mini empire? Nothing else is worth doing (to them).
- firefax 10mo ago>I don't want to assume, but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios (spare Valve). This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame. Despite all the talk from libertarians about how private donations are the solution to the world's ills, open source software very rarely gets substantial donations.
- Steve6 10mo agoLibertarians don't claim that they have "the solution to the world's ills". Just that the government is causing worse problems than it solves, and generally those problems can be handled by a free market. We're already being taxed like crazy while that money subsidizes things almost everyone disagrees with. The libertarians believe that if people weren't taxed as much they could voluntarily spend money on things that are valuable to them. Some people would donate more and others wouldn't donate at all, and that's okay. I believe we would see a lot more voluntary donations without the burden of high taxes. Claiming "libertarians haven't solved this yet" while continuing to take everyone's money is not a fair argument. To stay on topic, this thread is about a private individual donating to a project he supports. That's something everyone should be happy about. And he did not do it as a political statement.
- gamblor956 10mo agoHistorically, donations to charities drop when tax rates go down. As a percentage of income, donations were highest when tax rates were highest. The best example that low tax rates don't increase giving: in 2017 the TCJA reduced tax rates for most people, and increased the standard deduction (but reduced the charitable deduction). Even though they were being taxed less and had more money to donate, Americans donated several billion less to charities each year (estimates very, but they're all between $15 and $20 billion less each year).
- Steve6 10mo agoI want you to know I took some time research and educate myself on these claims. From my findings, I could not find anything directly correlating the 2017 TCJA to total donations. The TCJA did change how deductions are treated, and more people opted to go with standard deductions instead of itemized deductions, but this is not the same as total donations. It is possible this incentivized people to donate less because they couldn't get as much of a tax write off. For total donations, it has continued to trend upward despite some fluctuations, and a $20 billion swing is not a large deviation. The numbers I saw were $400+ billion during that time. Again, this has many more factors than the TCJA. Most importantly, I'd like to reiterate that libertarians do not claim that cutting government will "solve" problems like open source projects getting enough funding. Just that it will give the free market an opportunity to find a balance. No big bill is going to solve these problems either, it will only make it worse. The end does not justify the mean. Stop taking people's money, and let them spend it on the things they find valuable even if you disagree with it.
- jayd16 10mo agoAAAs use their own engines, or increasingly Unreal Engine, though. They usually prefer to get a contract and a neck to wring as far as vendor tools go.
- selfawareMammal 10mo agoHow much money does he have in order to make such a big donation? Has stardew valley made that much?
- cdelsolar 10mo agoSolo developer who’s sold millions of it, yeah I think so
- rvnx 10mo agoHalf a billion USD (40M+ units sold), so 125K USD to have the core engine of your product be actively maintained by an expert for the price of +/- one developer is a very good deal
- bhaney 10mo agohttps://steam-revenue-calculator.com/app/413150/stardew-valley https://steam-revenue-calculator.com/app/413150/stardew-vall...
- giancarlostoro 10mo agoThis should really put any AAA studio to shame. A single developer sold half a billion dollars on Steam alone.
- MattRix 10mo agoWhy would it put them to shame? It’s an incredibly rare situation and most AAA devs would be super happy for him.
- giancarlostoro 10mo agoIs it incredibly rare? We've seen time and time again in the last few years, really basic indie games overtake AAA games in sales on Steam. Schedule One is another one which had 450 thousand concurrent players not very long after its launch. It seems AAA game studios are missing what gamers want at every turn. There's an uptick in indie devs that have broken through the barriers with good gameplay despite the graphics not being AAA quality. Edit other games that come to mind: Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hades II, Schedule 1, and R.E.P.O. More obvious examples: Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio were all indie studios as far as I am aware. Minecraft being one of the most successful games at 350 million copies sold.
- chrisntr 10mo agoCouldn't have seen this donation go to a more dedicated group of folks I have worked and interacted with in the past and love seeing these contributions back! :)
- barrenko 10mo agoA true Christmas story! Somewhat unrelated, could someone provide insight into the following - "MonoGame is a "bring your own tools" kind of framework, which means that it provides the building blocks to build your own engine and tools, but it isn't quite an engine itself. If you are expecting a scene editor (like Unity or Unreal), MonoGame is not that. If you love coding and understanding how things work under the hood, MonoGame might be what you are looking for. And fear not, getting a game running with MonoGame only takes a few minutes."
- orthoxerox 10mo agoYes, this is basically correct. When you start writing a game with MonoGame, all you get is basically a class with two methods, Update() and Draw() that MonoGame will be calling in a loop, plus a bunch of libraries for input, graphics, audio, content loading etc. you can use in your code. It's a step beyond something like bare raylib or SDL2, but it's a far cry from Unreal, which lets you think in terms of game entities from the very start: "here's the map, here's where the player will spawn, here, add some buildings and you can run around them". With MonoGame/XNA/FNA, LOVE2D, libGDX, HaxeFlixel you are getting a bunch of tools instead, which is probably not bad if you like coding and your game doesn't fit into one of existing popular genres.
- mikepurvis 10mo agoI think a lot comes down to whether a game is art-first or code-first, and almost all modern games are art-first, so it makes sense to have your platform be one that artists and designers are immediately productive in, and the software people are basically writing behaviour modules and plugins for that established system. But it's good that code-first engines still exist. There are always going to be projects that are more experimental, or don't have a clear pattern of entities, or are dynamic enough that that kind of thing doesn't make sense.
- gmueckl 10mo agoThis is a somewhat naive view of engines in modern game development. Full-featured engines allow every department to dive in head first in parallel. The first gameplay elements often get programmed before the first pieces of content arrive. Scenes can be blocked out and drafted immwdiately at the start of the project. Complex animations with states and blend trees can be created amd tested independently of the gameplay code. Audio scenes, complex cues and (dynamic) music can be mixed and mastered independently of any code to integrate audio into the game. The whole process is highly parallelized these days and the engine tools serve to insulate the departments from one another to some extent so that everybody can move faster.
- larusso 10mo agoWhen ever I hear and see Mono Game I think back at the time I decided to dig a bit into XNA. I was a huge Xbox 360 fan and liked the idea of the indie platform they tried to setup. At the time the decision moving from Flash was either XNA in c# or Unity. Back then Unity used JS as a scripting engine. I wanted nothing to do with that. I also thought that MS is a saver bet. Well XNA is dead but the legacy lives on in parts in MonoGame. Unity well, would have been a better choice. But in end I had to work with Unity anyways be it not as a game developer implementing game logic.
- pepperball 10mo agoAs many, I got into programming as young boy thank to video games. I remember one year, someone bought me an old book on game development. It was a book using DirectX 3.0. To this day, that was probably the most intimidating programming books I’ve ever read. I remember hearing about XNA at the time and it just made so much more sense to me. I’ve tried a few times to get back into game development, but I don’t like most big engines. The opinionation of them doesn’t square with how my non-game dev mind wants to model things, and I’m too retarded for the math/physics involved in rolling your own engine. I did briefly toy with monogame though during a period where I was unemployed. It certainly had me the most comfortable as someone who’s career prior had been enterprise .Net crap. At this point though, game dev seems extremely tedious. I have much more interest in game design. I’ve considered picking up genetic coding just to try it out for that purpose.
- drakythe 10mo agoThis reminds me of Relogic (Terraria) donating 100k to Godot and FNA after the whole Unity pricing change debacle a couple (few?) years back. Really glad to see mega successful devs giving back to the tools that they use.
- sph 10mo agoAlso Mega Crit, devs of Slay the Spire, which are making the second one in Godot. They’re one of the largest sponsors to the project now.
- unpopularopp 10mo agoI'm sorry but why C#? Isn't the big tech (Microsoft) in this case is a very big downside? Why not LÖVE (Lua) for example? https://love2d.org/ https://love2d.org/ There is also libGDX (Java) but not sure Oracle is any better than Microsoft. https://libgdx.com/ https://libgdx.com/
- rahkiin 10mo agoLua is awful for anything large. It is untyped, refactoring does not exist, etc. C# is an amazing language with amazing tools and very good libraries.
- benbristow 10mo agoC# is open source now and has been for a while. Same as .NET Only proprietary bit is the debugger (vsdbg) but there are open alternatives.
- orthoxerox 10mo agoBecause it was Microsoft that developed XNA a long time ago. It was XNA that inspired all the other frameworks you mentioned, and when Microsoft invariably abandoned it there were enough people using C# to make games to create demand for an open-source reimplementation.
- seabrookmx 10mo agoC# is very popular in game dev. Unity, Godot, and the XNA successors (Monogame, FNA etc) all use it. It's higher level and more productive for the average programmer than C++, but still has static typing and much more mature libraries than Lua and other dedicated game scripting languages (of which there used to be many). A lot of game development is Windows centric, and many C++ game devs prefer Visual Studio (the full fat one, not VS Code). I'm guessing MS is seen more favourably in gaming circles than it is in web dev. Windows and the Xbox are both tier 1 platform targets for game devs as well.
- tredre3 10mo ago> I'm sorry but why C#? Because Stardew Valley is written in it. Probably half of modern games are written in C#, too (Unity). It's not exactly an odd choice. > Isn't the big tech (Microsoft) in this case is a very big downside? No, a language being backed by big tech is a plus as long as the stack is fully open-source (which .net now is). > Why not LÖVE (Lua) for example? Because Stardew Valley uses MonoGame, not LOVE. > There is also libGDX (Java) but not sure Oracle is any better than Microsoft. Other than Minecraft, can you name one successful game written in Java?
- whit537 10mo agoHe should join the Open Source Pledge (disclaimer: I run it). The minimum is $2,000/dev so I'd say he qualifies haha
- yakattak 10mo agoStardew Valley is one of a few indie games that seems to be known outside the usual “gaming” circle. I have a few friends who’ve never engaged with any games but absolutely loved Stardew Valley. It’s the pinnacle of cozy, I suppose. ConcernedApe has done something special with game development to achieve that. I always look to him as an example as I take to game dev as a hobby. This is yet another way I want to take after him for sure. Looking forward to Haunted Chocolatier! Also I’d never heard of MonoGame somehow, def going to take a peek now!
- tempest_ 10mo agoI love Stardew and played a bunch when it was first released. He really had perfect timing with its release. The original developers and the rights holders for harvest moon had so badly fumbled for so long with bad releases or only in Japan releases etc. Someone was bound to show up in that space since there was a clear demand for that type of game. It also helps that he aped (heh) harvest moon from the super nintendo / game boy generation so it basically runs on a potato and no one needs to buy dedicated hardware.
- bombcar 10mo ago“Harvest Moon but for every platform ever created” was such an obvious need it was surprising it took that long to arrive. Just like it’s somewhat amazing to realize it took until 2009 for “digital Lego” to catch on with Minecraft.
- Mobius01 10mo agoDefinitely a perfect timing situation, though with substantial risk. Considering the time the game was in development, an alternative could have showed up in the market. However, I believe Stardew Valley’s appeal wasn’t simply of fulfilling a void in the market. It is great because there is genuine passion for the subject in the execution, and the content in the game is truly compelling for a wide audience. An amazing story.
- mindcrash 10mo agoNot without reason: Stardew Valley, which has been sold to millions of gamers, has been created using the free MonoGame engine. So ConcernedApe is giving back to the open source software which made his commercial success possible, like commercial parties should.
- sneak 10mo agoGifts do not confer obligation. Copying deprives the original party of nothing. Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”. This idea that anyone making money with free software somehow owes the original authors anything (or “should” donate a portion of their profits) is ridiculous. If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead of giving it away for free as a gift. By releasing software under free software licenses you are explicitly stating that you do not expect or anticipate payment for it. The licenses (that they freely chose) are clear. Free software, in addition to being free as in speech, is also always free as in beer. My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck?
- kwanbix 10mo agoIt is the moral thing to do.
- sneak 10mo agoI disagree. The moral thing to do would be to respect the stated wishes of the author of the software, who made clear when they published it that no payments of any kind are expected. If I gave you a gift and you tried to give me money, I would be offended. I’m not saying free software publishers wouldn’t accept donations - just that publishing free software is giving a gift to the world, and there is NO moral obligation placed on recipients. That’s the point of free software.
- kwanbix 10mo agoWhat can I say. That you can not see it speaks volumes about your moral compas.
- GabrielBRAA 10mo agoPretty cool, I think the industry benefits a lot with more game engines or frameworks at disposal.
- mirekrusin 10mo agoMonoGame has great logo.
- mips_avatar 10mo agoAs someone who has been solo developing an app for months concerned ape is such an inspiration. He literally spent 5 years on stardew valley with zero income. It's such a beautiful game and reminds me what you can do when you follow what feels right.
- gmueckl 10mo agoThe sad truth js that for every solo devs that becomes successful, there are an untold number of solo devs that don't find an audience and fail. The reality is pretty brutal in games.
- mips_avatar 10mo agoYeah but how often do you finish a AAA game and want to cry at how beautiful it is. You get that feeling pretty often with an indie game. Like something really important is being done by indie devs.
- tmtvl 10mo ago> You get that feeling pretty often with an indie game. Poppycock. What, you wanna cry at how beautiful *checks notes* Hatred is? What about Unity Asset Swap Shovelware #375438? And for those who fall on the 'violence' side in the 'violence' vs 'sex' debate, how about we take a gander at the corruption genre? Sure, there are some amazing indie games (think of Unrest, for example), but there's also a ton of low effort garbage, and far too many projects which suffer from a lack of time, lack of resources, lack of ambition, or, sadly, lack of care. And, of course, the occasional 'I can't believe anyone at any point during the project thought this was a good idea'.
- bigstrat2003 10mo ago> You get that feeling pretty often with an indie game. I've never had that feeling about any game. Indie games tend to be higher quality (because they are made by people who prioritize the game above business), but I think you're strongly overstating how good they are.
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- thrownawaysz 10mo ago>MonoGame is free to use on all platforms from the public repository, but the code for supporting console platforms is only accessible to authorized console developers. >These platforms are provided as private code repositories that add integrations with the console vendor's APIs and platform-specific documentation. https://docs.monogame.net/articles/console_access.html https://docs.monogame.net/articles/console_access.html How can something be open source and closed at the same time? Is this basically MIT license? (Project page says Microsoft Public license)
- jmalicki 10mo agoIt's a common business model - have an open source core, but have separate closed source extensions to support enterprise features.
- thrownawaysz 10mo ago>It's a common business model But no one is paying MonoGame in this case? Maybe I'm just thick but X developer pays for MS/Sony/Nintendo to become authorized > and then they ask permission to use MonoGame per the page. 1. Apply to the vendor developer program (required for publishing). 2. Through the program, request access to the MonoGame console repositories MonoGame gets nothing in the end.
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- kuylar 10mo agoIn the same page, > The MonoGame Foundation cannot directly give anyone access to the private console repositories without prior approval from the vendor due to NDA requirements set out by each vendor. Blame here goes to Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft (though I'm not so sure about Microsoft) This also applies to Godot, another open source game engine, which doesn't have any code for console support on its upstream repository.
- zinekeller 10mo ago
- renewiltord 10mo agoIndie devs doing this is pretty cool. I think the Sidekiq guy gave $250k/yr for years to Ruby.
- spicyusername 10mo agoAs an aside, Monogame is a really great way to create video games.
- 999900000999 10mo agoNothing wrong with a self interested donation. He donates, the engine remains a high quality tool, he doesn't have to write the whole stack himself. Theirs a Flat Red Ball fork that can even build C# to Web. Hopefully these solutions can be shared with Godot so theit C# web export works.