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Cracked Game Released To Get Back At Pirates
John Wagger writes "When Greenheart Games released their very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) yesterday, they did something unusual and as far as I know unique. They released a cracked version of the game, minutes after opening their Store. The pirated copy was completely same as the real copy, except that after a few hours into the game, players started noticing widespread piracy of their games in the game development simulator."
People posting for help trying to progress.
I'm going to buy this game just because they have illustrated their point SO well.
The real irony of course is that the game itself is a rip off of Game Dev Story by Kairosoft for IOS/Android.
Don't forget Serious Sam 3, who's DRM manifested as an invulnerable pink scorpion.
This is what happens when games are made by gamers. It's mainly the big, long-disconnected companies that think DRM will save their games from pirates; everyone else just acknowledges it with a little fun.
Ah, the invincible pink scorpion. It appeared fairly early in the game, which was probably a good idea. If they'd put it in too late then pirates might have been put off (more so) from buying the game, but since it was so early it gave pirates a chance to get a feel for the game but not have to replay too much if they decided to buy it.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
This is unique insofar as they released their own cracked version, whereas I believe Earthbound and Serious Sam would detect modified launchers and activate their DRM. One of the Batman games (Arkham asylum, I think) did the same thing, it messed up your batarang so you couldn't complete certain parts. People posted about the issue, thinking it was a bug, on the official forums and then got publicly shamed by a moderator who exposed the fact the 'bug' was related to pirating the game. I don't like DRM but at least they're being creative! But with Game Dev Sim, you could argue it's not DRM.
Where are the statistics about how many game companies have closed due to piracy? They sure don't show up with any of the quick attempts I've been trying with Google.
In Sundog: Frozen Legacy (Apple II, 1984), we had a fairly robust, multi-level copy protection method. However, many of the 'cracking' tools out at the time would actually produce a runnable copy of the game -- it was just that the game wouldn't pass its final internal DRM check. In the game, including in 'cracked' versions, you started out on the surface of a given planet (Jondd); you could drive around the planet's surface, walk around the cities, go into stores, buy and sell goods, etc. But when you attempted to lift off into space, if that final DRM check failed, you'd get the message "Clearance to lift denied due to pirate activity" and you would be unable to take off and travel to any other world or system. (Note that you'd never see that message in a legitimate copy of the game.)
Now, the game actually had space pirates who would attack your ship, so a lot of people didn't realize just what the message meant. We would get occasional phone calls from customers asking what they were doing wrong and how they could get clearance. We'd listen for a minute, then say, "Well, just mail us your Sundog floppy disk, and we'll send out a new one for free." Heh. On the other hand, we had at least one person call us up on the phone and say, "Yeah, I get it" and then order a legit copy.
Note that for those customers who did buy an actual copy of the game, if they sent in $10 along with their registration card, they'd get another Sundog floppy disk -- that is, a second complete copy of the game, which they could keep as a backup or give away (or, frankly, sell). Also, if anyone actually did have a legit Sundog floppy that died or was otherwise damaged, we'd exchange it for a new one for free.
Sundog (Apple II) was on Hardcore Computing's "Top 10 Wanted" list (for a cracked version) for quite some time. It was eventually cracked, but I believe it took a year or two. You can find runnable Apple II disk images (for Apple II emulators) online.
I really don't know what copy protection was in place for the Atari ST port of Sundog, since that happened after I left FTL Games. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Valid.
There's other potential reasons, too, however. Let's see if I can come up with more:
1. There's a higher percentage of people running Linux who have more money to throw at games like this. Having the more money, the higher average paid is really the same (potentially less!) when you're talking averages of their income. (Don't know if there's any truth in this one, but you can test it probably the easiest out of them all, in theory.)
2. Linux people are used to and very comfortable with setting their own price. They regularly get completely free software and donate back to the original project whatever price point they choose. Many have probably watched projects that they donate to succeed, and many have probably watched projects they donate to fail. As such, they've learned some lessons about paying whatever they want and what tends to be a more successful level of pay for a project. Seeing this, they are aware that paying the more money is worth it, because they want these projects to succeed, and being more experienced than most Windows users in doing so, they pay more.
3. Maybe the Linux folk value these games more than the Windows folk do. Thus, the Linux folk pay more, regardless of the other points.
4. There's a lot of cheap people who get a cheap computer running Windows from their parents, and then only pay anything for the Humble Bundle at all, because they can get away with only paying 1 cent or 1 dollar. This isn't as prevalent in the Linux world, where more people buy their computer to their own desires, taking budget into account but not taking it for free off of their parents as much. As such, they're also more willing to pay more for products.
5. Because all of these reasons (including yours) can exist alongside one another and easily interact with one another (amplify each other, even), it could be a combination of all of these factors to various different degrees. Where income could be involved, that could influence the willingness to spend said income. With less games available for Linux, the games that are available could be seen as worth more due to the lack of supply. Putting all of these into play, you can get a complex system resulting in Linux users paying more on average when given the choice.
... There's probably more that I didn't even think about, but I figured that's a good start.
Being dickish? This sounds like an excellent addition to enhancing realism and add to the challenge. I hope they also support creating free to play and open source games, as well as donation based monetisation models. I am totally getting the pirate version of this game.