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A comment on Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun free to download . Parent comment

Re:Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun free to download by mrduncan on Monday February 15, 2010 @01:06PM (#1127109)
I suspect that it's mostly an issue of money. Releasing a game, even for free download, costs money in the form of staff, servers, bandwidth, etc.
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Re:Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun free to download by Batsu on Monday February 15, 2010 @02:15PM (#1127249)
Not to mention with the advent of digital distributors such as Steam, making an ancient game available for $2 still draws in a couple buyers every now and then without any marketing or much effort.

In fact, Commander Keen, a game that was released by iD Software 20 years ago, is available on steam right now for $5.

Naturally, there should be some drop off point in sales where the PR becomes more worthwhile than the couple bucks.

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Re:Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun free to download by presidentender on Monday February 15, 2010 @01:13PM (#1127124)
If there's DRM involved, the conversion from disc to bare .exe would have a minimal cost involved, I suppose. But releasing your game as a torrent would erase the cost of servers and bandwidth.

EDIT: MechCommander was released as a torrent. Microsoft (you know, that Microsoft) owns the IP.

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Re:Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun free to download by klipt on Monday February 15, 2010 @01:24PM (#1127145)
But releasing your game as a torrent would erase the cost of servers and bandwidth.

A game via torrent? It's probably already been "released" for them...

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Re:Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun free to download by daveungerer on Monday February 15, 2010 @02:09PM (#1127236)
They only get the promotional benefits if they create an official release.
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Re:Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun free to download by rogermugs on Monday February 15, 2010 @07:31PM (#1127966)
or if some idiot out there finally figures out how to monetize torrent... even an included movie ad or something... or a modified game that shows a boot screen with an advert would be completely acceptable to me.
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