Not enough.

"Also, even selling one game means I need to be registered as self-employed"

Not necessarily true. If you are on PAYE, you can simply inform your employers of your second income and they will do the necessary paperwork/deductions (precious little extra work). Alternatively you could complete your own tax return every year, or up the ante and register a limited company (with optional VAT registration) which does increase the paperwork but means you are equipped to take on contracts etc., which generally pay better (think double) what a salary does.

If you are on PAYE, your NI contributions are taken care of, so that worry is taken away the minute you take a straight job.

Oh, go on

Personally I'd like to get a job at a real game development company. You probably have the skills required, Richard, so if you still enjoy game development you could try that approach.

Anyway, best of luck.

Yeah, but if you bought a game and then found out the next day it was released for free you'd probably be a little upset. Why not give you a refund, etc.? It's understandable. And with that, perhaps this thread will serve as a lot of pity purchases. Ka-Ching! (No offense intended)

Seconded. All of those break-out, tetris, Mario Bros., side-scrolling shooter clones, etc., etc., etc. have been done. They don't really offer much in new game. These days I want 3D games that can still capture my imagination the way Mario Bros. did 15+ years ago. If you want to make a living out of game development you'd be better off getting hired by a major game development company. It always amazes me when I hear people talk about shareware games because I can't remember ever considering buying one.

Building games for a living is hard, especially when you started 10 or 15 years too late! However, you got experience very few could claim, so use that wisely.

you should make also make a wiki entry about solo game development career being a bad move.

It would remove all value from your purchase. That's wrong. And moreso, it's bad business. Most would be unlikely to invest in that person/company again. Maybe you really wouldn't mind, but many people would. Personally if I bought a game and discovered the next day it was released for free I would be upset (unless it was advertised and I decided I didn't care). But if it was released for free a month or more later, meh, that's negligible.

Whatever. I'm not sure how you sleep at night, because you never know if something you bought has been sold for a lesser amount to someone else!

You buy stuff in the present, in the moment. If it's worth it to you when you bought it in the moment, then it has its value. But if you complain when the company folds the following day, what you are really saying is that it was never worth the money to begin with. And then you're the idiot for buying it when you didn't think it was worth it.

And I don't disagree that some people would feel robbed. But surely those people already live a pretty miserable existence, always worrying about stuff that's out of their control happening to people they don't even know.

And to be clear: I don't think Phipps has any obligation to do anything. If he wants to release things now, next month, or never, that's his decision.

Edit: Did anyone ever post this? (Month old.) Neon Wars is on their list. None of my games made it.

Matthew, I disagree.
Since I am aware of the fact that prices always drop, when I make a purchase part of my consideration is "does the cost difference between buying it now and in t time worth having the product t time earlier / for t time longer".
I wouldn't mind buying the shareware game X even if I know that in six months it will be released for free if at the time of purchase I believe that having the game six months earlier is worth the added cost. However, if a product were to suddenly just go free a short while after I made my purchase it will indeed disrupt the earlier considerations I made, and will probably be quite annoying. (Because the extra one day of waiting is worth the difference in prices, in this example)

Sad news to hear. Bright side is that you'll keep game developement as a hobby, so we won't lose a good talent. Anyway we'll somehow lose an example. You are one of a few people around here who was able to finish not only one game. Plus your games are fun to play and are very polished.

But decisions was made. It wasn't easy but was inevitable. So good luck with everything you do.

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Yes, that is irrelevant.

Yes, that irrelevant.

I will admit if Richard made a new post tomorrow saying "Guess what? Sunnyball is free and open source!" I would feel pretty dumb having just forked over $30CAD for a n electronic download + physical media.

Edit:
That is to say I would feel dumb for not having seen it comming given the fact that he announced that he is closing down and frequents this site full of murderous leeching open source pirates.

Just kidding about the murderous leeching open source pirates remark.