The discussion here is amazing! Takes me right back to the early days of Linux and discovering Free Software. How will developers eat?? Who would write software for free?? These people clearly didn't think this through!! Amazing to hear it all again, lol!

Let's think about it. Free software just applies to the source code. Artwork, logos, even trademarked names are not Free. Support, services, and documentation can also be non Free. This is the Red Hat business model and they make a ton of money.

Right now several very popular games are free or almost free to install and play. The game studios make money off of in game purchases. There's no reason that couldn't continue.

Games could be Free but connecting to the server for multiplayer would of course cost money.

What about anti cheating? I think motivated software engineers working together around the world could come up with solutions to this. Or (and?), good social engineers could come up with incentives/punishments that heavily encourage fair play. I worry about this one the least. Here's one idea that my son just made me aware of this morning. Some game he was playing allowed him FPV of his teammates after he was eliminated from the round. He saw his teammate could see through walls. This angered my son and he called the teammate out. The cheating was defeated.

The discussion is so bad because the article is.

There’s so many nuances around assets, trademarks, copyright, monetisation, cheatware(?), multi-player etc but the article ignores all of it and goes for the straight freedom angle. How do you even have in-game purchases when you can’t control client code? Do we even have a single example of FOSS and mainstream game that made money and was multiplayer?

Terrible slop and I am flagging it.