Slashdot Mirror
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."
The ratio of pirate copies vs bought copies may be obscured by platform.
Looking at past Humble Bundle stats (games _without_ DRM management) it shows that even though piracy is still as abundant, the same amount of people are still willing to pay. Even more interesting, though Windows buyers ouranked 75% of others, Linux users payed the most on average. ... and that site link in TFA just went down.
You really need to read the article.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
>they did something unusual and as far as I know unique
If I rememeber correctly, the devellopers of Serious Sam 3: BFE did something very simlar a while back. An invincible monster would appear in the later levels of the game.
That is the mother of all trolls. Definitely pirate troll level: British admiral hat and solid gold scabbard
i can't it's /.'ed. which i assume will show up in their game in the next patch.
People posting for help trying to progress.
I'm going to buy this game just because they have illustrated their point SO well.
but what happens when the in-game pirates start playing their pirated pirated copies of Game Dev Tycoon? And the next generation? And the next? This game was mislabelled. It's not a game at all, it's an infinite pirate creation device.
The real irony of course is that the game itself is a rip off of Game Dev Story by Kairosoft for IOS/Android.
You skipped the second half of TFS.
The game is a game about game development, right? In the pirated copy, the games you develop will have a chance of getting pirated (!) which goes up as time goes on, eventually causing you to lose as you are then unable to make enough money to continue. It's delicious irony.
Web cams only, something like...
Dialog Box: "The boss is angry about our games being pirated! Go see him quick! [Click here to see the boss.]"
*click*
Webcam turns on showing the person sitting at the keyboard playing the pirated game.
It's pretty sad when someone can't even work up the reading comprehension to grasp the story from a short summary.
In total, if you play the cracked version of the game, the simulator will ramp up the rate of piracy for your simulated company's games, so you will lose. It stacks the odds against you.
It really is down due to traffic. And cloudflare really is playing medical insurance company again. If you're not familiar, it's where you pay and pay and pay for their protection and then that one time when you critically need them, they're useless and refuse to properly do their one single job that they had (they claim there's allegedly no cached version of the page for them to serve up off their servers).
The secret to this is, slap together some nonsense game title in minutes and then download the pirated version of Game Dev Tycoon. Laugh as you earned a free game just for letting people download your non-working junk code!
Apparently you have read and comprehension problems. That is exactly what the poster you are criticizing said. Additionally he said that it is ironic because they proved the idea is false by pirating their own game (the simulator) and still having profit, as you fail to understand.
I read the article. Most of it just read like a game dev who was pissed because his game wasn't the next angry birds.
They claim 93% piracy after 1 day but I wonder how many of the 3000 (yes that many) downloaders only found out about the game due to being on the torrent site.
I'd be interested in seeing the numbers after a month and more interestingly what the reviews of the game say. Nobody will buy a rubbish game after playing it. Thats why most games companies dont usually offer game demos & hate piracy.
How many of them would have bought the game if it wasn't broken?
What do you think Game Dev Tycoon is about? Railroads?
Here's the world's worst barely formatted copy-paste job for those of you who can't access the site because it got slashdotted (and cloudflare dropped the ball)
When we released our very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) yesterday, we did something unusual and as far as I know unique. We released a cracked version of the game ourselves, minutes after opening our Store.
I uploaded the torrent to the number one torrent sharing site, gave it a description imitating the scene and asked a few friends to help seed it.
A minute after we uploaded it, my torrent client looked like this:
Soon my upload speed was maxed out (and as of the time of writing still is) and my friends and I had connections from all over the world and for all three platforms! How does piracy feel?
The cracked version is nearly identical to the real thing except for one detail Initially we thought about telling them their copy is an illegal copy, but instead we didn’t want to pass up the unique opportunity of holding a mirror in front of them and showing them what piracy can do to game developers. So, as players spend a few hours playing and growing their own game dev company, they will start to see the following message, styled like any other in-game message:
Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt.
Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high chance to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.
Some of the responses I found online (identities obscured to protect the guilty):
Is there some way to avoid that? I mean can I research DRM or something
And another user:
Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me!
As a gamer I laughed out loud: the IRONY!!!
However, as the developer, who spent over a year creating this game and hasn’t drawn a salary yet, I wanted to cry. Surely, for most of these players, the 8 dollars wouldn’t hurt them but it makes a huge difference to our future! Trying to appeal to pirates
I know that some people just don’t even think about buying games. They will immediately search for a cracked version. For this reason, when we released the game, we also published a page which targets people who search for a cracked/illegal version. Unfortunately, due to my lack in search-engine-optimization skills, that page has had no impact yet, but I hope it will convince some to buy the game in the future.
[]if years down the track you wonder why there are no games like these anymore and all you get to play is pay-to-play and social games designed to suck money out of your pockets then the reason will stare back at you in the mirror.
I do think it’s important to try to communicate what piracy means to game developers to our consumers. I also tried to appeal to a particular forum a day earlier after someone who I gave early-access to the Store seemed to have passed on the copy to others:
We’re just a start-up and really need your support. The game is only 7.99USD, DRM free
Clearly, my post hadn’t worked too well since on the same forum someone posted the earlier screenshot (“Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me!) just a bit after I made my appeal and this was followed by many others complaining about piracy.
I still hope that it made a difference to someone.
Anyway, how many really did buy and how many did pirate our game during this first day? The awesome/depressing results
Today, one day after release, our usage stats look like this:
Genuine version: 214 users
Cracked version: at least 3104 users
Over 93.6% of players stole the game. We know this because our game
What part about the title "Game Dev Tycoon" leaves you wondering what the subject matter of the game is? Even if that didn't make any synapses flash, the last sentence should have done it: "...players started noticing widespread piracy of their games in the game development simulator."
See that "game development simulator" bit? Combine that with the title and let your brain run wild.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
Can't wait for rockstar tycoon, where piracy takes heavy toll on main characters cocaine habit.
It is a game. Not the real world. In this pretend world they have in the game if your games get pirated you lose income. Whether that is the case in the real world or not is irrelevant.
The fact that you will LOSE because of that is not obvious from TFS. TFA is /.ed anyway.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Side note, but CloudFlare rarely helps much with Slashdotting. Most of the time what kills a site is generating dynamic HTML out of a database without sufficient caching, and CloudFlare by default doesn't do anything about that, because it has no idea when it's safe to cache dynamically generated pages. By default it just proxies media files, so it can help things if bandwidth was the bottleneck for a server being hammered, but bandwidth usually isn't the bottleneck.
If you generate static HTML pages (or pages that are static for a period of time), you can mark them cacheable in CloudFlare. But if you're doing that you probably won't go down anyway, because serving up static HTML is not server-intensive.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The game is a management-sim in which the player manages a game development studio.
In the normal game, you start out in the 8 bit years, writing games and selling them. You use the profits to hire artists and developers, R&D an engine, advertise, licence etc., to make bigger and more profitable games, and as time passes, technology improves. The in-game economy is balanced for a challenging but winnable game.
In the "poisoned" game they seeded the warez sites with, after a couple of hours of play, the in-game advisor says "we're seeing a lot of piracy, it's going to affect our sales". And from then on the in-game economy is deliberately wrecked, so sales figures plummet despite you doing everything right.
On cue, the messageboards see pirate gamers asking why the game suddenly became unwinnable -- asking if they can develop in-game DRM, to beat the in-game pirates.
Normally I'd say RTFA, but since it has been slashdotted, I'll give your ignorance a pass and just correct your errors as I encounter them.
Game prices are too high
This game was $8 USD.
People don't want to spend any amount of money without knowing what they will get in return
They offer a free demo to give you an idea, and also offer a pirated version of the game which gives several hours of unadultered gameplay before they introduce their "bug."
So many completed games simply stop being played and it's no longer useful. Is it really worth the $50+ ? Especially since you can't resell it any longer?
Again, this game was $8 USD. Additionally, the game is DRM-free, available on all platforms, and is being ported to Steam as well. This is an indy company with very consumer-oriented and forward-thinking ideas who simply conducted a fun little experiment on sales versus pirated copies.
Every single legitimate argument pirates spout cannot be applied to this situation. The game was DRM free, ported to all major OSes, offered a playable demo on their website, and very reasonably priced at $8 USD (cheaper than many mobile games).
> Downloading the torrent is like... copyright infringement.
Not if the owner of the game made it available, which in this case they did. The torrent version is a time limited demo.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Perhaps that is because piracy rates are much lower for consoles. Perhaps you should ask the question "how many developers might have gone bankrupt if console piracy were as common as PC piracy?" But that's pretty difficult to answer, of course. Perhaps another question might be "how many games haven't included a PC release because the developer doesn't believe it can make money due to piracy?"
"Game prices are too high"? Seriously, is US$ 8 too expensive for you? We're not talking about an US$ 50 game here.
"People don't want to spend any amount of money without knowing what they will get in return."? There are demo versions available.
They're there in their room. You're on your own.
So certainly they will want to try it before they buy it. But if they like it and their friends like it, they will likely buy it if they can afford it.
Just like how only people who truly need it will take welfare. It has nothing to do with the fact that many people feel that they deserve to get "free" stuff just for being born.
This should be the perfect release: solid title legacy, cheap, no drm, demoversions, free advertising trough pirate networks, complete with slashdot coverage and everything. Kudos. Would probably buy if i was into the Tycoon series.
Can I light a sig ?
Ahh I miss the grits...Lets see a HOSTS file protect against hot grits in your pants!
You pirated the article, think of the developers!
It's pretty sad when someone can't even work up the reading comprehension to grasp the story from a short summary.
In total, if you play the cracked version of the game, the simulator will ramp up the rate of piracy for your simulated company's games, so you will lose. It stacks the odds against you.
it's not a cracked copy. it's a release by the developers that has built in defects.
IT IS NOT A NEW STRATEGY, several other games have done that too.
you know why they did this? for publicity.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The game is DRM free, you can use it on up to three of your computers for your own use,
If it was actually DRM free, wouldn't there be no limit to the number of computers you can install it on? Unless the 3 computers thing is just a suggestion. If they have a server monitoring how many installs you have for a particular serial number, and prevents you from installing on more, that's not DRM free.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
I haven't played this game yet, but if I downloaded the "pirated" version knowing it was a demo of sorts, by reading this /. article or having a short "you've downloaded the torrent demo. It's the full game, but blah blah blah" and I liked the "pirated" version, I'd buy the full game. If I downloaded the "pirated" version and there was no disclaimer, I'd assume the game was broken. No way I'd give up money for that.
This from someone who's kicked in a lot of money for beta's and less than stellar Linux releases (Minecraft, Humblebundles, Steam, extra donations to kickstarter's to be on beta tester list). If the game is available and I try it and like it, I will buy it. If the game is crap, "pirated" or not, it's off my list. There are many other things to spend money on before wasting it on crap games.
Kudos to these guys for trying something "new", but I think they, as with all developers, need to lighten up on the "piracy is killing our business". If you're not making money because piracy is hurting your bottom line so much, don't make games. It's obviously not a viable industry. Instead we constantly read about awesome new game selling millions of copies and turning huge profits and then hear the developer screaming about how piracy is running their business. I'm inclined to believe it's a bunch of horse shit. It also makes me believe when a developer of a less than awesome game starts screaming piracy, they're full of it too and are just on the "We'd make so much more money if it wasn't for piracy" bandwagon despite the fact that their game was just crap.
I'm not sure where to start...
"Initially we thought about telling them their copy is an illegal copy..."
Except that it isn't. You gave it to them. Regardless of you framing it as a "cracked" version it was still legal. Absolutely no one cracked and pirated your game. You simply released a free game. If you had done this without "tricking" people, if you had monitored usage of a version that had actually been cracked, then maybe it would be meaningful and maybe the conclusions you draw from it would be interesting. But considering that you did this "punk'd" style then it's pretty meaningless. Those "pirates" wouldn't have your game if it weren't for you. You can't donate to charities and then call them thieves.
It's also rather arrogant to assume that your game would have been pirated in the first place. There's no way for you to prove that if you hadn't released a "cracked" version that someone would have started torrenting it. For all we know, you could have just released your game and 214 people would have bought and downloaded it and no one would have pirated it and that would have been the end of it. Instead you concocted a convoluted, albeit clever, publicity stunt and played the victim of circumstances that you yourself created.
"Anyway, the cracked version has a separate ID so I can separate the data. I’m sure some of the players have firewalls and some will play offline therefore the actual number of players for the cracked version is likely much higher."
That is very speculative and flimsy at best. If you have torrent statistics then you know how many people downloaded it. What does it matter how many people send or don't send anonymous usage statistics? Unless you are comparing number of units sold versus number of units downloaded (from your own damn torrent) then it's a meaningless comparison. People who bought it could just as easily be using a firewall or playing offline.
I certainly get that you want people to pay for this game. I respect that. But I don't think this really proves anything at all. I think you've succeeded in clever publicity, not in proving any point.
Just consider a fraction of them your future customers, if they like your game, and if your name sticks to their mind at some point in the future they will buy your next game. Rest of them, just plain free loaders, if they talk about their game you might get some publicity. You have to stop thinking those 93% of them would have bought the game if it was not possible to get the cracked version
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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)
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/
Like you said, all the images still work
http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/image.png
http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/downloadingcrackedv.png
http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/priate-message.png
http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/steam.png
http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/itruinsme.png
http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/appeal.png
http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1day.png
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Your argument is flawed. That argument does apply to movies/TV where you can't try before you buy. Games have these wonderful things called DEMOs which allow the user to try before they buy.
That said, the devs are slightly off too: "DRM free" they say, then in the very same sentence "allow install on up to 3 computers"... hardly DRM free if it controls how many installs.
Thanks for the translation. TFS was like trying to read a telegraph message.
You have to look at the summary encoded. The editors work for the articles. But there's way too much information to actually read the article. You get used to it. I don't even see the summary anymore. It's just first-post this, APK that....
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It's obviously there to make a statement about the real world. That's why they put that in the pirated version--they wanted to tell real-world pirates how damaging piracy is by introducing bad effects within the game from game-world pirates. If game-world piracy is not representative of real-world piracy, this message is inaccurate and can be criticized for being inaccurate.
game itself is a rip off of Game Dev Story
Any more than GNU/Linux is a ripoff of UNIX, or Mega Man is a ripoff of Contra with a life bar?
Except it's only inaccurate in pirated copies of the game, as a clever "anti-piracy" measure. In a legitimate copy, piracy has a negative effect, but not enough to seriously affect sales of your virtual game.
Unlike porn, which yada yada rimshot hey-ooh!
Perhaps another question might be "how many games haven't included a PC release because the developer doesn't believe it can make money due to piracy?"
You could answer this by counting every Xbox 360 game that is also available for PlayStation 3 but not available for PC, such as Mortal Kombat (2011). Because Xbox 360's API is reportedly so similar to DirectX on Windows, I imagine that a port of an Xbox 360 game to PC would be far cheaper to make than a port to libgcm, the graphics API of PlayStation 3.
When you have DRM in a game that fails by any method other than notifying the user and refusing to run, you create problem for legit customers. I know that DRM companies would like to try and convince people that their DRM never, ever, fails on a legit copy, but it happens all the time. DRM is not perfect, it has issues. Two games I can remember that failed to function on my system were Neverwinter Nights and Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword. Both gave me a "Insert the game disc to play," error even though I had the disc in. It was an issue with the DRM that took multiple patches to fix in NWN's case and one in BTS's case.
While that was very annoying, at least I knew what was going on. I took the game back to get a new disc, just in case that was the issue (sometimes there's a production problem) and when that didn't fix it, called the publisher. When a fix came out, they let me know.
However when it is a feature that just breaks the game, you don't know why it is happening and you get mad. It is then worse if you get moron fanboys jumping down your throat claiming you "must have pirated it" when you didn't and the devs saying that it only happens on pirated copies. It also can take way longer for a fix to happen because it takes longer for devs to acknowledge and fix the problems.
So I am not a fan of what SS3 did. This game is a much better method in that the code isn't DRM, rather they released a different version on the torrent sites themselves. So it can only affect someone who downloaded a copy since it is not present in the legit version.
I am ok with DRM in games but ONLY if it is non-intrusive, if it doesn't mess with my experience. If it breaks my game, I'll get real angry, real fast.
I dunno, to me it sound like they're severely exaggerating the piracy issues in the "pirated" version beyond what would happen in the real world to try and make a point that's just not there. Based on what I've read the game is literally unplayable after a certain point regardless of how big an empire you build. If that was the case in the real world Blizzard, EA and Ubisoft would have been out of business long ago. Instead, at least in EA and Ubisoft's case recently, they're screwing over paying customers and still making money hand over fist.
$8 / game *214 legitimate copies = $1600.
Woooo what a payday. How many devs, how many days of work? Unless its "one dev" and "2 weeks", its not what you would really call "good profit".
Since the pirated version adds piracy to the gameplay, doesn't that make it a more realistic version and therefore a better version of the game?
This small company doesn't seem to be any part of it, but the real problem is the extreme distaste directed toward companies like Electronic Arts. I feel good about paying for a game like yours, or the last game I bought, Firaxis's Civilization but if I buy something from Electronic Arts I feel like somehow I'm letting the man win. While Firaxis has a parent company (that has a parent company) the difference between them and EA is that they don't seem to buy up franchise after endless franchise ala Clear Channel, gut them of their valuable innards and then spit out crap. Maxis used to be a great company but doesn't seem to exist anymore other than in name and rights to the games, and that's really annoying. It seems like they have a chokehold on the industry with their aggressive acquisitions. I don't want to pay for games made by EA because I feel like I'm just fueling the acquisition machine to ruin more of the gaming industry. People pirate games all the time, but EA seems to pirate games too in a much bigger, badder way. I think this is a step in the right direction, and a funny and ironic idea. Hopefully your game sells well, but you might do better if you figured out an elegant way to let customers know that you aren't a part of the faceless gaming juggernaut.
It's pretty sad when someone can't even work up the reading comprehension to grasp the story from a short summary.
In total, if you play the cracked version of the game, the simulator will ramp up the rate of piracy for your simulated company's games, so you will lose. It stacks the odds against you.
Anyone have a link to a hacked .exe that fixes this behavior?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The vast majority do have demos, and in this particular case there is a demo as well.
Which then totally fails at what they claimed to want to achieve; namely, hold a MIRROR up to pirates. Since the game ramps up piracy in the simulator to 100% over time, to ENSURE bankruptcy, it is NOT a "mirror". It's a photoshopped 'fatbooth' type pic in a mirror's frame.
Putting valid piracy statistics rates in from noteworthy logistics firms, and using that instead of a bullshit log scale would have provided an actual mirror. That wasn't what they wanted. They wanted to shut down the pirates, and feel morally superior about it, by performing a false equivilency.
I would play a game dev simulator with piracy as a feature, if the piracy model was accurate. No, a log scale over time is not accurate.
Heck, if I buy the game, I'd like to turn on the "real world economy" option and simulate what happens to my bottom line when I do and do not use DRM. Bonus points if it had a "REAL real-world economy" option that used real-world data to drive the simulation.
I don't have time to play this game but I almost want to go out and buy it to show support.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm betting the Venn Diagram is pretty tiny when you combine "People Who Read the Gaming Section of Slashdot" with "People Who Have Never Heard of the Tycoon Games" and "People Who Can't Infer Simple Concepts from Context" and "People Who Find It Easier to Bitch In the Message Section Rather than Click on TFA".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Copying ideas is not the same thing as copying implementation.
Ideas are cheap. Implementation is expensive.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Im not sure, but Im not going to make an attempt to justify piracy with that line of thought.
The fact is
* There IS a demo
* This game is dirt cheap
* This is an indy studio
* Theyre making very little money
And scores of posters are STILL trying to justify piracy. At the least this dev deserves to have only those who have paid, receive this game.
The game itself doesn't sound like something I"d normally play, but the cracked copy I'll definitely be checking out!
Well, it's possible that without pirates to spread word of mouth, you might have only gotten 100 genuine version users. Who knows.
Heh, this reminds me of the various difficulty levels in many games going up to things like "Insanity", might actually make some gamers deliberately play the unregistered/pirated version.
"You've only beaten it on 'hardcore'? Hah! I've made it to level 7 on unregistered!'
I don't read AC A human right
Game designs are not protected by copyright
The Tetris Company successfully sued the developer of another game with the same rules. Is Emacs next?
Are you kidding me? They release an indie game with absolutely no advertising. They put it up on a pirate website themselves with a known-bad copy. A few hours after going on sale, they're laughing at pirates and saying they have a huge piracy rate. This IS their advertising strategy, and it's as bad as they come.
When Hotline Miami released, it was available on multiple stores, was receiving a lot of coverage by major sites like Rock Paper Shotgun, and when a pirate version was released? They supported it as if it was official, because they didn't want pirates to get a bad copy of the game. They treated it like advertising, handled it well, and made significant profit with over 130,000 legitimate copies sold, and multiple ports and sequels in the works.
Hotline Miami got significant positive coverage because it was a good game, and they handled things right. This is a dismal thing which they admit is a poor clone of another game, and instead of going to bat for it, they shoot themselves in the foot and have the gall to whine for sympathy when they put it on a pirate site themselves, made it a known bad copy, AND procede to then laugh in peoples' faces after a few hours, when they do absolutely nothing else to promote themselves, or their game? Let alone produce something reasonably innovative or fun?
Let me know when some actual, live, half-way sane indie game developers show up. I'll be sure to shake their hand, instead. I'll hug and buy beer instead if it's ZUN. :P
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
"We know this because our game contains some code to send anonymous-usage data to our server. Nothing unusual or harmful. Heaps of games/apps do this and we use it to better understand how the game is played. It’s absolutely anonymous and you are covered by our privacy policy. "
Yes, you want our sympathy because you're indie, but yet you have no qualms in playing big brother and monitoring your users without explictly stating that you do so. Yeah, a "privacy policy" makes it okay.
Sorry, in my book you guys are assholes just like EA by merely doing that. Not that you deserve having your game "pirated", but you're still assholes. Not mutually exclusive.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
actually, this brings up an issue that's common with all simulations that have an economic or political model - including the sims, sim city, civilisation (and clones), and so on.
they serve as a form of propaganda for particular sets of economic, political, and cultural rules, that players internalise as they play the game.
if you program the economic rules so that piracy will ruin your businness then that is exactly what will happen in the game. it says little about the real world....and it's only really obvious in a situation like this where it is a deliberately released piece of overt propaganda.
a slightly less obvious but more troubling one is the rule in Civ (etc) that democracies aren't allowed to declare war, or that military units can force workers to be content in communism. or that corruption is universal under communism but non-existent under democracy.
http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Government
on the one hand, these are just the rules of the game. on the other hand, they're political propaganda about the pros and cons of particular economic models.
it's not limited to computer games, either - the earliest version of the game that was ripped off to become monopoly was actually propaganda about the evils of landlords and capitalism....at least that was the author's intention. the rules, however, taught players that monopolies were a good thing because that's how you won the game.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2986/was-monopoly-originally-meant-to-teach-people-about-the-evils-of-capitalism
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/09/how_monopoly_turns_us_into_uncreative_capitalist_vultures_partner/