FREE GAMES & why we should PAY FOR THEM
A downloadable zine
this is a little zine about free games & why we should pay for them, hence the title 📖
as a brief introduction, i'm kc & i make & play a lot of free games. i love free games but i'd love it even more if people paid for them & supported their creators, so i made this zine to explain why!
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WHY THIS ZINE IS PAID:
i priced this zine at $2 because that's the suggested price i have for all of my tiny games. i didn't want to give the option to click "no thanks, just take me to the downloads" though, because that would go against what i'm trying to say with this zine.
by paying for this zine, you also pay for & support the equivalent of one of my free games. the zine even comes with a free code for one game! (the code is a random tiny game out of the ones i created up to the release of this zine 🎲)
in turn i'll use the money made from this zine to make more free games & also pay for more free games... & so the cycle continues ♻️
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HOW TO REDEEM YOUR FREE CODE:
- click the "Get download key" button on your purchase page.
(you should be able to go to your purchase page from your purchase email) - use the link to claim the key for your itch.io account.
(or give it to a friend!)
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the zine is made to be printed on one page (letter size), but there is also a version with separate pages for easier digital viewing as well as a text-only version.
thank you for supporting free games 💖
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sign up for my newsletter to get an email when i release a new game 🎁
join my patreon for secret updates, a monthly digital postcard & early access to my games!
Purchase
In order to download this zine you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $2 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
Comments
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Will you put this on steam?
very late haha but I don't have a job as of now, so I can't really spend (especially if it's in USD because it's kind of expensive in my country). I have saved the games I want to play and I decided to not just spread the word, but also to play the free version now and pay later. ESPECIALLY free games because I know how the gameplay is, and because I had an access for free and me being thoroughly enjoyed by it, I feel like it'd only be good in my part to let them know about my gratitude monetarily as well sometime soon.
i cant wait till i get a job and am able to pay devs for their games T^T
You make some good points! I hope we can all see the value in making games, just like we see value in writing books or creating art or music.
thanks for commenting! i think that making games is a combination of what you've mentioned - you have games that have stories like books, games that have art & games that have music.
this seems kind of dumb that you want to write an article advocating for people to help support the free game devs but you want to charge for the article. it would seem like the best thing to do would be give away the article so the max amount of people would read it and help convince more people to give to the devs of free games. but you drastically limit your audience by wanting to charge for this and the message and the result your advocating for looses something. it is definitely something you should give for free to really be helpful to the free games creator community
i explain my reasoning for the price in the summary and i think you have misunderstood the point of this zine.
i also think that creators should never be told they "should give for free" anything that they make - i hope you don't advocate for this on other creator's pages. i will leave this comment up though to show the sort of stuff free creators have to deal with.
I'm sorry but um what's a Zine? I never heard of them before. >.<
zine is short for magazine/fanzine! you can read up more on them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine
After getting my first "tip" from my free game I knew the first thing I was going to do with the money... buy this zine!
I never thought that game devs who make small games *could* get support and should. Like you say, for devs, it's a classic dilemma of "I want my game to be free because I don't want to put my passion project behind a paywall" (hey alliteration!). But free games rarely reward you for the time and effort you spend.
Solution of tips/donations make sense and I hope more people could support indie devs!
Thank you for writing about this :)
thank you for commenting! it's definitely a dilemma so i wanted to try to organise my thoughts on the matter in the zine.
Straightforward and great points that everyone should see and consider!
I'm also very glad that you decided to make this paid. I hope more people support gamedevs who make free games.
Financial support isn't the only type of support that we are able to do but it helps the devs a lot especially in a world like ours.
Thank you for making this!!
thank you for your support & this comment! i hope we can all continue making/playing/supporting free games 💜
just purchased the zine :) i love the cute art in your games and i really love the Spring trilogy..i can relate to part of topics on it. btw i wanted to try doing a fanart of one of the character from the spring if its ok(regular looking character) and how do we use the code ? thank you :)
thank you! & fanart is ok (my fan work policy can be found @ https://npckc.itch.io)
for the code it should be a link - enter the link into your browser & it'll let you claim the game for your itch.io account!
thank you :) will post it here once it's done :)
Just picked this up - it's so important to support creators if we're able to! I loved the design of the zine, and the message is so important. Thanks for speaking up about this. :)
thank you very much for the support ✨
I don't even have a job and I paid for this zine. 10/10 would buy again because I love supporting fellow creators. <3
💖 (also i checked out your bitsy essay & it was really powerful. thank you for making it!)
I'm so glad you enjoyed it. <3 Thank you for making this zine! This is so important. Been thinking about making a zine myself :D