Thinking about selling your source code?

Through FGL (seems all my reasoning lately is either FGL or Bold Pixel… oh well, moving on) I found a blog post from FlashNinjaClan’s webmaster, the well known Archbob. Here’s the link, come back when you finished reading it, please…

Most of the post was about finding cheap games. I’m fine with that, if a portal wants to find cheap games, by all means, go for it. I found disturbing that developers sell their games WITH source code for $150-$200 and even more disturbing that portals (or at least Archbob) buys it with the intention of using the “engine” (gotta love the easy use of the word) to create more games. Here’s why you should not sell your code for that amount of money:

Source code is not content

When you license a game, you are licensing the use of content you created. That can have a varying value depending on the well known keywords fun, replayability and so on. The source code you used to do it has nothing to do with it. The value portals see is content based, not the time and the engineering expertise you’ve put in it.

That’s what people pay for code: the time and the knowledge. Is your time and knowledge really worth $150-$200?

Source code is as valuable as it is reusable

Archbob said it with a problem: he will use the source to create other games. If other games are created with the same “engine” then the value that was paid to you, the developer, should paid as many times as games created. It’s quite simple and follows the same logic: code is not content! I registered today at flashden… see how much you’ll have to pay for reusable bits of code.

Is it really worth it?

So you did a game that got no bids. Then you got a $150 bid and you’ll sell your game, your code and that’s it. Unfortunatelly, in the long run is much more than that. What will that do to you and all other developers in the long run? What’s the impact of those $150? Maybe you can get a nice thing for yourself and I’m sure you deserve it, but where will that take you in one, two or three years? You are being paid $150 to create competition for yourself and for me for free for the next games built with your game.

So… think about it…

If you are thinking about selling your source code for that amount of money, please do not do it! You are not doing anyone a favor, quite the opposite!