iGame Radio

On Tuesday, May 4, Wolfire Games, in conjunction with four other Indie game developers, started the Humble Indie Bundle, a charity drive to sell five games in a bundle for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux, at the price point that anyone wants to pay. The proceeds would be split between the developers and the two charities, EFF and Child’s Play, in whatever way that the buyer wished.

In three days time this charity drive has raised almost half a million US dollars, from more than 57,000 contributions. Up until recently, the average contribution was holding steady at just under $8.00, but that number is now going up.

The reason may have to do with an update that Wolfire Games made to their website in which they broke down the numbers to show who had been contributing what. Initially, there was a graph on the site that showed the contributions brought in per platform. This showed that a bit more than half of the contributions were for the Windows platform, while Linux and Mac shared fairly evenly the remaining contributions.

But now Wolfire has also broken the numbers down for the number of contributors donating per platform. They claim that this number is quite a bit different, with 65% Windows, 21% Mac, and 14% Linux. The result, they say, is that the actual contribution per platform type is on average highest for those using the Linux platform. They state that Linux users are paying on average $13.65, while Mac users are paying $9.61, and Windows users $6.78.

That’s a very interesting result, especially in light of the very common stereotype that Linux users won’t pay for applications if they can get it for free. So, where are they getting the numbers for these statistics?

I spoke with Jeff at Wolfire Games, who stated that all numbers come from comparing the platforms each purchaser is on at the time of purchase with the amount they spent. “The platforms are deduced automatically from their browser headers,” he said, “after they pay, they are able to change them on the purchase page in case they bought it at work, or identify with two or three platforms.”

There is a poll at the bottom of the game download page which includes the phrase, “Which platform(s) would you like your contribution to count as, for statistical purposes?” This is used for buyers to make corrections to the platform used in cases where buyers are making purchases at work, or are purchasing a gift for someone else. However, because this poll can be used by any purchaser, does that mean that a group with an agenda could skew the statistics?

When Wolfire posted these statistics, a large number of responses came from self-described Linux users claiming that they had purposefully paid a larger sum to encourage future game development on the Linux platform. The Linux platform has long been the black sheep of the gaming community as far as development is concerned. Mac is second, recently enjoying a renewed interest from some unexpected places. Windows users have no such agenda…of the three platforms, they enjoy the most games developed for their system.

Among the responses in the article, you can find replies such as, “I haven’t bought it yet, but I was planning to do it from a Linux machine. Now I’ll just buy it from my Mac but check it as a Linux purchase to add to the Linux numbers. The no-DRM thing is something closer to Linux than any other OS/platform.” Is there enough people buying the bundle, for one platform, then changing it to another platform afterward, to make the statistics less than accurate?

This is hard to say, though the number of Linux users who also own a Mac or Windows box is probably not small (especially based on the number of responses saying just that in the post). But the fact that the platform can be changed afterward makes the viability of the statistics less than completely accurate.

But what about the statistics themselves, and their impact on the gamer community? Will a publication of these statistics actually make for a change in the average donation amount? Or the average donation per platform? Are we seeing a rare or one time response from gamers, especially Linux gamers, that is not an indication of the average?

In the time that it has taken me to write this article, the average donation has actually risen by 6 US cents. So have the average donations per platform (Windows: $6.88, Mac: $9.63, Linux: $13.67). As for that last question, that’s hard to answer. But I will say this. Nearly half a million dollars in three days is nothing to sneeze at.

I will conclude with one other thought. One statistic that we haven’t seen yet is the amount of the donation that is going to each group based on platform. It would be very interesting to see which platform is the most charitable.