lugaru-hd posts

You may remember that a few days ago it was reported that someone had uploaded the entire Lugaru indie action game from developer Wolfire to Apple's Mac App Store and basically sold it as their own game for a much lower price than the original version. The person who did this said that because the game's source code was released he was within his rights to do such a thing. That's a viewpoint which Wolfire, obviously, disagreed with.

Now it looks like the faux Lugaru game has finally been removed from the Mac App Store. While Wolfire is in the dark on exactly why this happened they are clearly happy that Apple made this decision. Wolfire also announced that if you bought the counterfiet Lugaru game you can send your Mac Apple Store receipt to the team at contact@wolfire.com. Wolfire will send you a copy of the real game plus an extra Steam code for the title as well.

An indie game developer has found that one of its open source-based games has been copied and uploaded to Apple's recently launched App Store. Developer Wolfire, who released the third person action game Lugaru HD back in 2005 for PC, Mac and Linux released the Mac version of the game via the Mac App Store two weeks ago for $9.99. However the developer discovered that someone had basically uploaded the same game to the App Store, relabeled it as Lugaru and marked as being for sale for just 99 cents.

Kotaku managed to get a quote from from Alex Matlin of iCoder, the "developer" of the other Lugaru game, who basically said that because the game's code was released as open source he has the rights to redistribute the game. However, as pointed out by Wolfire on its blog site, that does not apply to the "the assets, characters, and everything else aside from the code itself." Wolfire has been trying to get Apple to pull the other Lugaru game off the App Store but as of this writing it has not yet happened.

The Humble Indie Bundle - a pack of six games available for whatever you want to pay for it - has now ended its deal, raking in over $1 million in a single week. This alone is impressive, but what is also cool is that about 30% went to charity. The developers made a detailed breakdown of all money received as well as money received after merchant costs (credit card fees, Paypal fees, etc) that can be viewed separately.

Along with this news comes another surprising tidbit. Out of the six games featured, four will be releasing their source code to the general public for budding game developers to pick through. The four games that are releasing their code are Aquaria, Lugaru HD, Gish, and Penumbra. Only Lugaru HD is currently available, but the other developers are busy converting their goods to open-source and will be releasing them soon! This is great for freeware communities, as all of these engines are worth working with.

Earlier this week we alerted you to the Humble Indie Bundle which lets you pay whatever you want to get five great indie game titles (World of Goo, Gish, Aquaria, Penumbra Overture, and Lugaru HD). Now with just under three days to go before the deal disappears, the bundle has generated over $560,000 in revenue as of this post. The average contribution is about $8 or so, but one anonymous contributor paid $1,000 for the bundle. Linux users have contributed the most per donation with an average of close to $14.

You still have two days and 23 hours to jump on this deal. Remember that you can also choose to put a portion of your money for the bundle to contribute to two charities (the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Child's Play).

[Via Blue's News]

Pay what you want has become the newest craze in the indie community, with developers offering the deal left and right. Now comes the best deal we've ever seen regarding this new payment scheme. Five classic indie games are available in a pay what you want bundle, and as a kicker, the bundle also includes two charities for the division of money. Altogether, the bundle is worth $80 if bought at standard prices for each game.

The games included in the pack are World of Goo, Gish, Aquaria, Penumbra Overture, and Lugaru HD. We've raved about most of these games on the site before, and with good reason. They are all incredibly good, and one of them (World of Goo) pioneered the pay what you want gimmick. The two charities involved in the deal are the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Child's Play. You can pay what you want and divide it however you want, from even among all involved to giving to a single developer or charity. You get all five games, free of DRM, regardless of who you give the money to.