Open-sourcing your game (at least the engine and game script) will also get you some free PR while not really impacting your sales if you keep the art assets closed. It might also give you a few free bugfixes and new features if you release the code of github or such.

However if your game is based on a 3rd party close source engine and you can only release the game code, or you release it under some sort of non OSI approved shared-source license, most people will consider it as bad PR at best.

Quoting: JuliusOpen-sourcing your game (at least the engine and game script) will also get you some free PR while not really impacting your sales if you keep the art assets closed. It might also give you a few free bugfixes and new features if you release the code of github or such.

However if your game is based on a 3rd party close source engine and you can only release the game code, or you release it under some sort of non OSI approved shared-source license, most people will consider it as bad PR at best.

You have a very interesting point. Unfortunately, I do use third party engines to ease the development (I work alone and do everything, from programming to graphics, music, etc). However, truth be said, using third party engines is a real pain sometimes.

Quoting: CleanWaterHi everyone,

I'm a indie developer. I currently develops games for Linux, but there are not so many users are from this system playing my games right now.

You as Linux gamers, do you have tips or advice for raising a certain game popularity on the Linux community?

To attract your audience to Linux I think the best thing you can do is exploit what Linux offers and other operating systems don't. It in the broad sense has better performance, allows a minimalistic approach and gives validity to the command line. Just the mere act of allowing the users to fill the gaps that you leave intentionally or unintentionally is going to benefit them more if they use Linux. Linux is also better suited for arcade-type scenarios than the consumer grade alternatives that are being offered (Windows Embedded is a different beast) so that is also something to think of.

To attract the Linux audience to your games, always tricky. I think just the mere act of allowing them to test the game before purchase and the ability to spend more money would significantly boost the effectiveness of Linux sales. Noone wants to do a blind purchase and thus if noone goes, they will never go. Giving free weekends on steam on a regular basis allowing people to test the game and making sure that the game is designed to live well beyond those periods is key to success in my opinion. Other than that I can only recommend you make a good game with a good tutorial.

I should probably add that concerning yourself with how many Linux sales you get shouldn't be that much of the priority. Just that your practices need to be profitable. The most common reason for a person to switch away from windows is because they get fed up with the platform's antics. And this is literally the story of most people here: at some point they went "FUCK THIS SHIT!", they found Linux as an alternative, they look through their games list to see what will still run and then they go like "Alright, I can keep playing most of my games. LETS DO IT!".

So even if they don't buy your games with Linux in mind, you will make their lives so much more comfortable in the long run; up to the point where they may switch to Linux. And while this doesn't necessarily seem beneficial to you, having support for free and open platforms prevents you from getting vendorlocked. You will always have an escape when Microsoft commits its gazillionth fuck up, Sony tells you how to make your games or Nintendo gives you shit hardware to develop on. And because you've kept the door open, your own user base will be able to migrate more easily as well.