I'm a little confused about what you want.

There are many open source games out there right now, which you can use for free. You won't be the only person using the game, there is no exclusionary system in place. This means you will need something else to drive your potential customers to you, something other than content. These games are often already widespread because they are free with no restrictions.

If you are looking for someone to provide you with exclusive content, games that require hundreds or thousands of hours to develop and just hand them over to you exclusively for free, that is unlikely to happen. Generally either the authors are looking to monetize it themselves, or they make it freely available to everyone as open source.

So, will open source games work for your needs?

Thanks Frob for the reply. (received no notification to say a reply was received!)

The game content is only a portion of the site as the business strategy focusses on several other avenues outside of the game arena.

Yes, I think open source games will work but where I'm having difficulty is finding out the true licensing agreements in place and what restrictions a third party website may face by using their games.

The difficulty we are having with Open Source games is they appear to be different to Freeware games and someone mentioned we should be focusing exclusively on Freeware games as opposed to Open Source

I am not interested in exclusivity - games in use by several other websites is not an issue. We simply want to provide good quality age appropriate game content that will form part of a website while we are in Beta to test the market response.

Any advice is appreciated.

thanks

The difficulty we are having with Open Source games is they appear to be different to Freeware games and someone mentioned we should be focusing exclusively on Freeware games as opposed to Open Source

Yes they are different.

Freeware games have all their rights retained by the original authors, and then you need to negotiate a contract with each author permitting you to use their game on your site, permitting you to make and distribute copies, releasing trademarks and other IP rights. Lawyers will be involved, as will papers with signatures.

Open source games can be used by anyone, and generally for any purpose depending on the exact open source license used. Most can be used for any purpose you want with a very small list of restrictions. Open source licenses generally include all the necessary permissions automatically so you don't need contracts with papers and signatures from the original authors. There are some exceptions, of course; for example a few of the Creative Commons open source licenses allow unlimited noncommercial use but have restrictions on commercial use. You probably still want a lawyer since it is advisable to always have a lawyer help you to CYA when using other people's IP.

Thanks Frob for your much appreciated feedback and insight.

Open Source games it is.

Cheers