i was thinking what do you guys think about monetizing the app center and start adding pc games to the store ?
you would have to add proton to ubuntu as standard perhaps as a snap to make it easier to always get the latest stable updates.
Gaming is a huge market and i dont see why ubuntu cant take a piece of the pie.
forexample start adding newer games that are already certified on steam so you know those will work out of the box in proton.
and 2) did you know that 85% of games that came out in before 2010 are inaccessible ? (yes i know gog is going to do something similar)
so why not focus on those older pc games it will give u a unique selling point.
I thought 10% charge via the store is fair.
Maybe this can help generate some income to help improve developing ubuntu and at the same time bring old classic games back in peoples hands so to speak.
While the snap store is managed by Canonical, it is not an Ubuntu project. That said, the App Center is, but adding items to the Snap Store is not up to Ubuntu or Canonical; it’s up to developers.
Ubuntu is a Canonical product and a community project. Snap is a Canonical product that is separate from Ubuntu, even though the two are tightly integrated.
Canonical also has several products that, while they might use Ubuntu, are not in themselves Ubuntu projects. Those include Snap, Microcloud, LXD, and a whole bunch more.
The contents of the App Center come from the snap store itself. In order for what you’re suggesting to happen, those must be included in the snap store first. Only developers can add things to the snap store (after they undergo some review), so it’s up to developers (not necessarily Ubuntu developers as anybody can add applications to the snap store) to add items. For instance, the Opera Browser is on the Snap Store, but is neither managed by Canonical nor an Ubuntu developer; it’s managed by Opera Software themselves.
Thank you i suppose i will make a thread on their forum but in the case of discussion i would like to hear more from people here who know more about this stuf maybe it is a stupid idea it wouldn’t be the first time hahaha
Games would only make sense if they were online games that weren’t on Steam, like LoL if it ever came back to run on Linux.
There’s a Minecraft launcher on the Snap Store, which is a good example of what kind of game would make sense to be on Snapcraft.
Steam does a lot of stuff, and it’s a trusted platform where people already have accounts and games purchased.
If they were going to spend time and/or money doing something related to games, I suppose it would make more sense to focus on porting Lutris, MiniGalaxy and the Heroic Games Launcher to Snap, as that would make life easier for users, especially beginners.
Ideas that are generally “hope that Canonical will pay somebody to implement XYZ for many great reasons” or “Canonical should do MNOP for income” are more appropriate for the Lounge to bake a bit more.
Ideas in the Project Discussion category (like “Ubuntu should do XYZ”) are more appropriate for concepts a bit closer to deployability. Like discussing who is going to do the work, who is going to bear the expense, the market research and revenue projection, how it will be governed, etc.
The best way to get your business/revenue/success idea in front of a Canonical executive is to mail a letter to the Canonical Ltd. office in London.
Folks who really believe that their idea is a big moneymaker are also generally welcome to implement it themselves, and reap a whole career and fortune from their entrepreneurship.
Back in 2018 there was a plan to add the ability to monetise apps in the Ubuntu Snap Store. Indeed, the snap buy command is still lurking, without being hooked up to anything.
snap buy --help
Usage:
snap buy <snap>
The buy command buys a snap from the store.
[buy command arguments]
<snap>: Snap name
Sadly the process for buying things was horriblybroken. Here’s a video I made of the process back then, which (I believe) helped sink the feature at the time
I don’t believe there has been motivation to re-evaluate this and add the feature again. Partly because (I suspect) people are mostly buying services/subscriptions these days, and not boxed copies of software. Plus the margin made doesn’t cover the cost of having a bunch of people dealing with refunds and support requests.
Plus, there are already great places to buy PC software, as you know. Trying to get game developers to use another place will be hard work, and require tools that are reliable for packaging games on Windows and macOS. Because that’s what many/most game devs use.
Yeah but if you look at google and apple there is a way to make money out of it.
even if you charge just 10 procent which is reasonable with enough people buying this could have to potential to be very profitable and this making a war chest for ubuntu development and maybe motivate canonical to invest more in ubuntu desktop.
Also with the classical games it wil give ubuntu a usp and because they would be the only ones or one of few.
and cheap people would be more willing i think see mobile games.
This could also jump start app developers to develop for ubuntu because there would be money to be made with a very reasonable 10% charge.
Which is one of the reasons why they don’t and in the case of the games they dont even need to port just make it work with proton and perhaps the community and canonical could help with that.
Get a Launchpad account, sign the CLA, and send in pull requests.
Contrary to popular belief, Canonical isn’t a gigantic company with tens of thousands of employees. They need all the help they can get. If you care about something and want to see it done, start getting it done!
This discussion has clearly run its course. Open Source development and changes don’t happen unless those who want to see work happen help to do the work. As this discussion is becoming circular and not progressing, we the moderators have chosen to close this topic. Attempts to reopen in another topic will be summarily deleted.
