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Indie Devs Upload Their Own Game To The Pirate Bay
dartttt writes "Indie game company tinyBuild Games, who released a platformer called No Time To Explain recently, uploaded their own game to the Pirate Bay. However, there's a key difference between the game they uploaded and the version you can purchase: the game characters wear pirate hats, and everything else has a pirate theme. One of the company's founders, Alex Nichiporchik, said, '[S]ome people are going to torrent it either way, we might as well make something funny out of it. ... You can’t really stop piracy, all you can do is make it work for you and/or provide something that people actually want to pay for. For us this is humor, we like making people laugh.'"
How is this any different from RIAA or MPAA uploading fake torrents of their music and movies to make it more difficult for people to find what they want? They are doing exactly the same - polluting torrent sites by uploading fake content. I want the real game, not some fake pirate themed one.
I wonder whether the fact they uploaded it makes it legal to download? If they claim they gave no permission to download would it be entrapment?
Because people will never RTFA:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6617784/No_Time_To_Explain_Windows_tinyBuildGAMES
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
even if his mum did it, it wouldnt be to waste on extremely overpriced mass manufactured SHIT that the companies are putting into market to suck people off of their money.
and when he did get a job, he would be even more unwilling to waste his money on such SHIT.
just to reiterate - SHIT. for thats what they have been producing for a long time. most even arent being pirated.
Read radical news here
So they did have time to explain :(
Okay, seriously - how did all of you previous commenters not notice that he's just trolling?
They are creating buzz about their game. Its free marketing, and marketing is one of the areas that indies do not have a lot of money to fund.
I am positive that many people will download it for free and never even consider paying for it. However, I am just as sure that another large group of people will download it, try it, like it, and go and buy the version without pirate hats. (I am assuming that they have something in game or in the downloaded files that tells the end-user how to get a legit copy.)
I even expect that there will even be a small amount of people that will give money to the developer just for offering their game like this. Reasons for this will be because they legitimize p2p, to encourage more devs to go this route, or even just to give a big FU to companies like EA, Activision, and Ubisoft that think that DRM is the only way to succeed.
In the end, I would wager that they will make more money on this game by letting people download it for free than if they tried to actual remove their game from filesharing sites. (not that it is ever possible to completely remove a file from the internet.)
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Will it still be illegal to download this modified version, willingly uploaded by the author? Because that could seriously backfire if paying customers find out there is a (to all intents and purposes) identical, legal and free version available.
with Monkey Island.
Makes me want both copies just because the company is doing something different. I respect them greatly for this even though i don't know anything about the game, it just makes me want to but it because they are obviously being a bit of a smartass.
New and different win! Many internets to them!
By having the publisher put it up you have the confidence that the game will not have the malware that a cracked copy can have.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8960833940831434429
the newer one was not as cool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_cAzTn3c0Y&feature=related
There's me thinking it was just a torrent site. In other words, it didnt actually host the stuff. Or is this just publicity-whoring? Hmmm what do you think?
Some companies ruin the original game by putting in DRM that makes your computer unstable, making the pirated version better. These guys make the pirated version better than the original by putting in pirate hats. I mean, pirate hats make everything better.
Not as cool as at first expected. They uploaded a buggy different version of the game. This would be awesome if they just uploaded their *real* game to TPB and said "have at it". At that point I would go and pay for it. As is it's still more "we're trying to trick you" nonsense.
I did *exactly* this with my first game on android:
http://www.demonoid.me/files/details/2221567/2040927/
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5555899/Physics_Playground_for_android_%28awesome_game_%29_-_apk
its the full version of the game - but the faces are made to look like pirates!
This game only had 20k or so downloads - but the rate doubled when I put it on demonoid - TPB made little difference though.
The same is true of my more recent game (wheelz) which has millions of downloads! though I cant find the link for that - I may have to re-upload if no-one else does :)
Exactly the same - right down to putting pirate faces on things http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5555899/Physics_Playground_for_android_(awesome_game_)_-_apk
And they want their game back.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
This just goes to show that the content industry still doesn't get it.
When the pirated product is superior to the retail offering, it provides a disincentive to purchase.
I WANT PIRATE HATS ON ALL MY CHARACTERS.
There is an early, free-to-play Flash version of this game available here.
(NOTE: Website contains other content which may be considered NSFW.)
The pirated version may be better in that case.
Happens with most PC games out lately.
how does your ISP handle "I can't play World of Warcraft" complaints?
Presumably by referring the user to official information: "In the event of such a restriction, you may be redirected to a direct download. Due to the nature of direct downloads, you may experience a slow transfer if redirected in this way."
Where do you live where ISPs are THAT bad?
Anywhere outside the reach of cable Internet and DSL Internet, which by now mostly includes rural areas. "WISP" stands for wireless Internet service provider, which usually means satellite, cellular, or something very similar to cellular. These tend to have horrible pings compared to DSL or cable and single digit GB/mo caps.
the game characters wear pirate hats
So even when there is no DRM involved, pirated games are STILL better than paying....
(on a serious note, I'll try the pirated game, since it should be legal if they're the ones I'm downloading it from, right? If I like it, I'll consider buying the less-awesome version; In other words, this was a successful slashvert)
The Internet has given stupid people the resources of intelligent people.
the rate doubled when I put it on demonoid - TPB made little difference though
So how does one get a Demonoid account?
Hear that?
That's the sound of everyone at Valve torrenting this game.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Did you warn them about Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina and the two major attacks on the World Trade Center (1993 and 2001)? Or maybe it was voicemail.
But seriously, if 1980s gameplay is so undesirable, then how do Wii Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade rereleases of 1980s games make money?
This was my idea!
On me jailbroken phone.
This user post in the pirate bay sums it up quite nicely:
"As far as I know, this build is probably worse than the original, since it's uploaded by the developers themselves, and you don't have an option to turn it into a 1:1 copy of the retail version. So, good try tinyz, but we like to get what money would get us, not what the devs want us to get for free. Just wait for the retail version to get uploaded. "
You can't negotiate with criminals, its not because its too expensive, its not because it doesn't have a demo, its not because it doesn't have the correct features, they are only excuses for stealing. Ideas such uploading directly to TPB are futile, what if every game does it? Eventually news would spread to the mass market and then no one would buy any game? A great way to destroy your own market.
Why did they upload the better version to TPB?
I'm still in development of my own one man indie thing (no link cause you deserve better) and I was going to do the same thing. Well, the more the merrier!
how do Wii Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade rereleases of 1980s games make money?
Nostalgia.
Likewise, modern era retro-style games play off nostalgia for the play styles and lower budgets from the 1980s.
Did you warn them about Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina and the two major attacks on the World Trade Center (1993 and 2001)?
FYI, the 2004 tsunami killed approximately 75 9/11's worth of people (no, I don't know how many that is in Libraries of Congress). I vote you drop the 1993's WTC warning and include the tsunami instead. The 2001 WTC attack was 1.0 9/11's, but the subsequent wars probably account for 50+ 9/11's in collateral deaths, so it is a worthy inclusion.
Furthermore, Hurricane Andrew only amounted to 8.7 milli9/11's, so I propose you swap that out for a warning regarding the Haitian earthquake, which was approximately 74 9/11's.
Katrina may be retained, if only by American personal prerogative; it seems reasonable to allow one free-elective warning for the communicator. However, you might swap this out for a warning regarding a different disaster applicable to one's own country or family member's preventable death as well, per same prerogative.
Hope this helps you in the future/past.
They want their cliched phrase back.
By changing the protocol used (and negotiating up/down to a mutually understood protocol), various information exchange speeds (300, 1200, 9600, 19200, etc) are achieved.
Eventually you run into the Shannon limit, the maximum amount of information that can be sent over a channel with a given bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. For example, good luck exceeding 56000 bps on a POTS (telephone) channel.
Does it have something to do with "frames" as in frame relay?
http://www.mediafire.com/?3u7istowiddu9g8
This isn't the first time I've done a MediaFire upload version of something from a torrent. :)
(Incidentally, I also sometimes upload torrent versions of stuff from non-torrent sources.)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.