Great point.. unfortunately, he's giving away his Darkness Springs games for literally nothing, completely destroying the market for indie games while also completely destroying his message. He seems to be very much part of the problem.
While it might be better for you to just make it free, it's obviously worse for the market as a whole. The people you're complaining about on the app stores have the exact same excuses - they tried to sell it, few people bought it, so they just made it free. Now everyone expects it to be free. So their next app and your next app now need to be free, too.
It's actually worse than that - it looks like your primary customers would be game developers (you're selling editors for 3D apps, javascript webgl, audio libraries, etc). This means that you are directly competing in your customers' market with a free product that you are supporting from the money your customers are giving you. You're de-valuing their market while using proceeds from them to de-value it further. Woops!
Well, it's a 2D game (my products are usually for 3D), but you have a point there. I was primarily writing about the app stores, and it is a web game, but you are basically right. Never though about that.
"In short, after 5 years, the game makes more money through ads when it is free, in contrast to selling the game directly."
I suppose that's the secret hope of anybody making an app free, or very low cost. They suppose it's going to be better for everyone in the end, including them.
If you are selling products or services where the variable cost is close to zero then free or freemium is an option. Some people will always have the incentive to go free and it makes perfect sense for them. Google and Facebook would be little niche companies if they had charged users for their services: "Buy 100 searches for 3 dollars". Personally, I would have settled for Altavista.
