Geever is absolutely correct. Moreover, markets for the
same game with a nonzero price can exist in parallel with a free download.
Let me give you some numbers and you'll understand. All costs are in South African rand. (Currently, R6-R7=$1. The exchange rate is less stable than between the really
major currencies.)
NB: Note I'm saying KB, not Kb.
When I first came across UFO:AI, I didn't have an internet connection at a reasonable price. That wasn't even long ago, it was back when 2.1 was current. Big name computer games were going for two or three hundred in stores. (Depending on whether it was old or new stock.)
If I had downloaded the game at home, I would have paid a lot more than I would for any game at a store. It was something like R0.60/min with a download rate of 7.5KB/s. I.e., R>500. It would also take a LOT of time. The horrors of dial-up.
(South Africans may chip in here and tell you that you can cap your calls at R7 each after hours. This is true, but you'll get disconnected every so often and have to dial again. You'll also have a much lower download speed -- only analog lines were eligible.)
I downloaded it at the university. IIRC, it cost R0.30/MB and the tarballs were around 400MB. So that's around R120. Provided you're at a university. Provided also you can find a way to justify downloading source code as "academic purposes". (Or don't get caught, if source code has nothing to do with your studies.) Once again, the university connection
can be used more cheaply -- but your connection grinds to a halt at these times. I've been in the computer rooms at 00:00 (when it's free) and you couldn't so much as open a web page with all the scripts downloading simultaneously.
I can't give you a price for internet cafés at the time. Current prices are not much different from what I gave for the university. It's something like R0.25/MB + ?/hour at a place near here. The download speed beats anything else on this list, though.
Currently, I'm on ADSL for free. I get to use it simply because it's cheaper than dial-up for my father's time-consuming work, even though he doesn't need need to pump lots data. R85/month for a 1GB cap, R140/month for a 5GB cap, R60/GB to temporarily increase the cap. Both at an effective download rate of about 40KB/s. Line rental is excluded -- but presumably you'd use it for phone calls too. There are larger caps with a lower per gigabyte cost. (Uncapped connections are exorbitant; R~600 IIRC. And I hope you like being throttled.) All contracts are 2-year contracts.
The latest I've hear on wireless prices works out quite similar to ADSL, assuming you buy a large (for us) monthly data bundle. Also on 2-year contract.
"Cable" does not exist.
So I'm lucky enough that I can download UFO:AI. Most people around here are not. Hell, most people are dirt poor.
Many people
do own a computer, even if they have no internet access. True, I can give the game to my friends. How big is my social sphere?
Now, most big-name computer games sell for a little over R300. Incredible Corruption (nickname, so as not to spam) sells "classics" for anything from R50-R130. (StarCraft still gets shelf space at R130!?) Another store sells various indie titles for around R80 -- the two I've tried weren't nearly as well-made as UFO:AI.
If someone sold UFO:AI or Battle for Wesnoth by mail for, say, R40-R50, it'd be the only way many people could get these games. And totally worth the money. Offer to split the money with NineX for hosting, and I'm sure the community would support it rather than raising hell as Nutter predicted. You could have the disks professionally pressed and still turn a profit,
just don't sell it to the First World!P.S. Business is not easy. Don't say I didn't warn you.