Linux users contribute twice as much as Windows users

Hope someone in the game industry sees this and realises that linux gamers are a viable demographic. Not many companies apart from id have released AAA linux titles offlate. Initial efforts to create linux gaming companies (like Loki games) shut down and I am afraid the wrong lessons were learned - that linux gamers wont pay for games. Hope this post changes some of that, at least for indie developers.

If you look at the top contributors in the stats area (<a href="http://www.wolfire.com/humble#statistics" rel="nofollow">http://www.wolfire.com/humble#statistics</a>), there's a guy that contributed $FF under the name 'unsigned char'. Brilliant.

Why windows user might be paying less: 1. They have loads of choices for cheap games compared to the other platforms and hence are used to paying less for most games but big titles (Oblivion, street fighter) 2. They have gotten ripped off often with people promising the best software/game in the world and ended up buying a dud.<p>Interesting thoughts: 1. Age distributions: My guess would be that a linux demographic would have a much different age distribution than the windows user. If a 10yo is trying to dl the package he might be susceptible to paying less. 2. Gender distribution etc.

It probably depends on the revenue model. If you charge the same amount for your game on Linux as Windows, then the fact that Linux users donate more cash is meaningless to you.<p>On top of this, I would bet that they have so many Linux contributors precisely because no-one releases AAA games to Linux, so their sample size is disproportionately represented by Linux users.

My guess on this is Linux users are more grateful when games are made for their platform and want to send market signals to encourage more of this.

Interesting to note that since posting donation averages on the front page, each average has increased by 10 to 20 cents. There's probably a dozen psychological studies on this sort of thing.

There's the possibility that the average Linux user is a supporter of donating (to open source software, and the like) and so is more likely to contribute to packages such as these.

Having written code myself makes me more appreciative of the amount of effort that goes into building good software. Compared to Windows users, more Linux users probably interact with code in one form or another.

My guess is that it is simply regression to the mean. There are more Windows contributors than Linux contributors, so their average contribution is likely to be smaller.

I paid $5. Why did I pay? Because I approve of their marketing style. Why didn't I pay more, am I a cheapskate bastard? No; I probably won't ever play a one of those games.<p>Point: There are so many things going on here, it's hard to draw clear conclusions from the numbers we're getting.