wolfire 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.

It's been just one day since the launch of the "pay what you want" return of the Humble Indie Bundle but so far it looks like this second effort to highlight indie games will be an even bigger success than the first such effort. According to the web site the revenues from Humble Indie Bundle 2 have generated just over $500,000 in just the first 24 hours. Nearly 70,000 purchases have been made to get five indie games (Braid, Machinarium, Osmos, Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans) with an average of just over $7 per purchase (together, the games normally sell for about $85). It's currently unknown how much money has been given to each game. It's also unknown how much was contributed to the two charities (Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play) or to a tip for the Humble Bundle organizers.

Some people have spent well over that average to get these games. One of them is Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of the indie hit Minecraft. According to the site he's currently the person who has spent the most with a massive $2,000 contribution. The bundle deal still has a lot of life left in it; it's currently scheduled to shut down on December 21.

Last year the team at indie game developer Wolfire launched the Humble Indie Bundle which let people pay what they wanted for five indie games. The bundle generated over $1.2 million over the length of the deal. Now the same team is doing it again with the Humble Indie Bundle 2.

Five more indie games are a part of this new deal: Braid, Machinarium, Osmos, and two games that technically are still in beta versions: Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans. All five games are DRM-free and come in Windows, Mac and Linux flavors. You can choose to spend any amount of money you want to get all five games and like the last bundle you can also choose to donate a portion of your money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play. This year there's also an extra option to tip the Humble Bundle folks. According to the Wolfire web site, "We have some humble ideas on how to change digital distribution that we're going to try out." The Humble Indie Bundle 2 lasts until December 21 at 4 pm Eastern time. You can check out the launch trailer for the bundle after the jump: