

How to sell an open source Android game? - Techmeology

A while ago, I wrote a simple strategy game based on Reversi, but with a few key differences in the rules. I showed it to some of my friends, who really enjoyed it, so I wrote an open source Android version called Chain Reversi over the summer, and published it on the Android app store (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=uk.co.techmeology.chainreversi&amp;hl=en). I had hoped to earn some money from it, but so far I haven&#x27;t managed to get anyone other than my friends interested in buying it since my skills are mainly in technology rather than marketing. I decided to make the game open source because I figured that might get a few people (who care about stuff like that) interested who might then share it with their friends and get some exposure for my game, but that hasn&#x27;t happened. How have my fellow Shashdotters gotten their success in selling on the Android app store?
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shams93
I got over 4,000 users now on my open source noise android app psychoflute.
But I gave it away for free, I'm working on an enhanced version with a cool
opengl interface I can sell, but I still plan on releasing the source, it
doesn't violate GPL to sell the packaged version of your app while giving away
the code, anyone can build from source and sideload on android, you're not
selling the code you're selling the convenience of being able to load it via
the android market without knowing about side loading.

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shams93
I would say going for some kind of niche is the only way to go these days, if
there are too many other apps in your category you're going to have issues. I
would even venture to say the games part of the app store is the hardest
section to crack you have a lot of competition so you really need to go niche.

