(hi everyone, this is my first post here) My name is Andy Schatz, and I started the indie studio Pocketwatch Games in 2004. We made Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa and Venture Arctic. Venture Arctic came out a year and a half ago, and I always felt it was severely overlooked. So I decided to make it free over the holidays, just to get more people to play it. Interestingly, doing that actually increased my revenue for the month due to an increase in traffic (and therefore sales) for my other game and also sales of the free game for commercial purposes. Anyways, it's a good lesson that sometimes offering things for less actually makes more money. More detailed stats and stuff over at my blog at www.qatfish.com. Enjoy!

It is a fairly standard tactic used by many sellers referred to as a "loss leader". Supermarkets advertise their super low priced items (often at or below cost price) to attract customers into their store knowing that they will likely buy other, non-discounted items.