Save The Penguins! We're Donating 100% of Linux Sales to Charity
Update Nov 1:
This is completed, you can find the final results here:
http://pixel-maniacs.com/blog/2016-11-01-charity-project-completed-18-penguins-adopted-
SHORT VERSION (TL;DR)
1) Buy our Game "Can't Drive This" on a Linux Machine (get it at http://store.steampowered.com/app/466980)
2) 100% of the Revenue we receive from sales for Can't Drive This for Linux in October, will be invested into adopting penguins in South Africa from here: https://sanccob.co.za/adopt – Saving 1 Penguin costs about 6.4 sales.
3) The adopted penguins will be named after the top users on the leaderboard "Penguin".
Deadline is 11:00 am on Nov 1, Germany Time
CURRENT PENGUIN COUNT
15 penguins at the moment, last update Oct 22, 3pm CET
LONG VERSION
We have recently released of Can't Drive This for Linux. Hooray!
We want to raise awareness for Game developers, Unity Developers in specific, that it might be easy to port your game for Linux and it's most likely to be worth the investment.
LINUX VERSION – PROFIT & LOSS
OR: ARE LINUX SALES THE ONLY METRIC THAT MATTERS?
This is what the current profit/loss calculation looks like:
Cost:
1 day of a developer, let us assume $30/h cost = $240
Testing: $0 It is not hard to find linux gamers who beta test your game on linux as the linux community is usually quite helpful and likes to support new programs and games beeing added to linux
Revenue so far:
- $633 since last week (Updated 22th of Oct)
We will of course post the revenue we have made in October, on Nov 1.
Beside the monetary aspect of the Linux version, you might also take other factors into account:
Linux is a free platform, supporting it is a good decision, morally
The Linux community is thankful for every Linux port you build and will talk about your game. There are also a lot of lists and databases that refer linux games, bringing you traffic and links to your website. The links to your website will increase the rankings of your game's website or landing page in search engines.
Linux users tend to be technically talented and might be able to give you very qualified feedback, and usually send you output logs and detailed information about their machines, in a support or feature request.
ABOUT SANCCOB
The organisation is based in Cape Town, South Africa and rescues oiled up penguins. They wash, fed and care for them for a few weeks, and then release them back to nature, as soon as they're strong enough.
Every year, SANCCOB treats almost 2,500 seabirds, of which approximately 1,500 are endangered African penguins at its centres in South Africa.
Here's a statement from Francois Louw from SANCCOB:
"SANCCOB’s primary objective is to reverse the decline of seabird populations through the rescue, rehabilitation and release of ill, injured, abandoned and oiled seabirds – especially endangered species like the African penguin. The organisation is an internationally recognised leader in oiled wildlife response, rehabilitation and chick-rearing; contributes to research which benefits seabirds; trains people to care for the birds and educates the public to develop behavioural patterns that benefit marine life and the environment."
Here are some pictures of their daily work:
HOW MANY PENGUINS ARE SAVED?
You might be wondering how and where you'll be able to see how many penguins were saved, and right you are!
1) Twitter
We're going to transparently post updates about our linux sales on our Twitter page.
2) InGame
Of course, you'll also be able to see all adopted penguins in Can't Drive This. The current Linux revenue divided by $42.24 (the price of a Penguin adoption) is fetched from our server. Based on the resulting number, you'll see penguins in the main menu.
This is how it looks like in the menu of our game.
Each penguin is representing an actually adopted penguin, we had 15 penguins at this time:
This is what it looks like, when you adopt a penguin:
Unfortunately, it's not allowed for Steam developers to reveal the share you get from a sale, but we'll be donating 100% of our share, which is currently roughly $6.6 per sale in average. (This does not reveal how high the share is, as the price of our game is different from country to country).
The adoptions will be donated on the 1st of Nov to SANCCOB by payment via paypal. We're not even going to wait for Steam to pay us, because most penguins don't care about things like that.
3) In our Penguin-Leaderboard
The penguins we adopt will be named after the Steam handles of the top players of Can't Drive This within the special "Penguin" clan.
If you want to have a penguin named after your handle, simply join the "Penguin" Clan in the Settings. Anybody can participate, even Windows and Mac users! We reserve the right to refuse names that include profanity, racism or any other form of discrimination – or any name that we don't see fit for a penguin. If you happen to be in the top spots and feel your name will be excluded, please provide us with an alternative until Nov 1.
In this screenshot, you can see that 1 penguin has been rescued by Linux sales so far. More and more names will be highlighted, the more Linux sales we get in October 2016.
This video shows how to name one of the adopted penguins after you:
HOW MANY SALES ARE MADE?
You might also want to know how many sales we've made with the Linux version of the game, so far. We have a steam-backend, where we get revenue-stats per OS. We've purchased our own game several times to check when a sale is counted as a Linux sale.
In order to count as a Linux sale, you must buy our game via:
The Steam Client on Linux
The Steam Website via Linux
It does not matter if your steam account is usually used on a Windows machine, we've tested that!
If you love penguins, please share this competition on Twitter, Facebook, or where ever else you can! :-)
Thank you!
Links:
Update Oct 20:
Some readers seem to have misunderstood this part:
Testing: $0, the Linux community is happy to help you port your game!
We've clarified this in the updated text.