Pangea Software, Inc. today announced that its popular 3D action game for the Mac, Bugdom, has been re-released as shareware. The company will donate 50 percent of the profits from the game’s shareware sales in March to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.
Pangea Software originally released Bugdom as a commercial title in 1999, publishing and distributing the title itself. Despite the game’s status as a bundle offering on iMacs and iBooks, Bugdom sold an impressive number of titles for an original Mac title during its run — Pangea said that Bugdom moved close to 30,000 copies.
Pangea Software president Brian Greenstone explained that the company’s inventory of Bugdom CD-ROMs is running low. Rather than build more units, Pangea elected to convert the game to shareware, so people could download it and pay for the software online.
“This should be especially helpful for international customers who currently pay very high shipping costs and import taxes,” suggested Greenstone.
This isn’t the first time Pangea Software has released its products with charity in mind. Several years ago, the company’s game Nanosaur was released as “charityware;” rather than make a shareware payment, Pangea requested players make a comparable donation to a charity of their choice. Eventually, however, Pangea needed to release the game as shareware instead to help cover the costs of hosting its Web site and managing the accompanying software downloads.
“A few years ago, it became difficult for us to continue doing charityware since our cost of doing business was increasing dramatically, but we wanted to continue the tradition with this re-release of Bugdom, so we’re going to see how much money we can raise for [the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation] during March.”
If you still want to pick up a boxed copy of Bugdom, Pangea has a few left — they’ll continue to be sold until inventory runs out. The new shareware version is identical to the retail version, and costs US$20. Download it now from Macgamefiles.com.
And by the way, if you get stuck playing and you need some help, make sure to visit MacCentral’s official Bugdom Strategy Guide for help.