Slashdot Mirror
Indie Game Developer Shares Free Keys on The Pirate Bay (torrentfreak.com)
Jacob Janerka, developer of the popular indie adventure game 'Paradigm,' recently spotted a cracked copy of his title on The Pirate Bay. But, instead of being filled with anger and rage while running to the nearest anti-piracy outfit, Janerka decided to reach out to the pirates. Not to school or scold them, but to offer a few free keys. From a report: "Hey everyone, I'm Jacob, the creator of Paradigm. I know some of you legitimately can't afford the game and I'm glad you get to still play it :D," Janerka's comment on TPB reads. Having downloaded many pirated games himself in the past, Janerka knows that some people simply don't have the means to buy all the games they want to play. So he's certainly not going to condemn others for doing the same now, although it would be nice if some bought it later. "If you like the game, please tell your friends and maybe even consider buying it later," he added.
Nothing insightful to contribute, just wanted to say that I hope it works out for him. People like this are the ones that make the world a more amicable, and slightly better, place.
If you're wondering what the opposite of a DMCA-wielding media conglomerate looks like - this guy is it.
Pleading with pirates begging them not to pillage your town. Good luck with that.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
But after reading this, I will now buy it.
The moral of this story is everyone should steal and be okay with being stolen from because it sorta equals out....right? Lol I like that he did this because it's his choice to do so, but the reasoning..yeah... not so karmically solid. I admire those who continue to make games as independent developers as it's a very cold, low chance of upside industry where almost no one wants to pay for the game up front (big shift since mobile apps became a thing) and many have no desire to pay for it after even if they enjoy it. Hard to spend hundreds of hours of your life working on something that people will take without paying for unless you truly enjoy what you do so much. But given the nature of the industry, it's now almost the rule to be free to play with the money coming from ads or more likely "micro-transactions" in game. Good luck to Jacob and to all game developers who do it at least somewhat for the love of the craft. Good luck to the ones who it for money too, because I ain't hating.
I know some of you legitimately can't afford the game
Then lower the price. As many on here will tell you, if you're making more than it costs to produce the game, you're a greedy bastard. Lower the price and more people can afford the game.
Janerka knows that some people simply don't have the means to buy all the games they want to play
Or maybe they should get a job, work two jobs or get a better job. Then they can afford to pay your exorbitant price.
All he's done is enable thieves and legitimized their theft. Oh, you mean he developed the game so he can do what he wants with it? How odd, because when any other game developer or movie company goes after pirates and thieves all we hear on here are people scolding the company for doing what they want with their game or movie.
Now let's hear the excuses for why it's acceptable to steal in one regard but not the other, or how not paying for a product or service isn't actually theft.
and people do mac os piracy as the hardware choice sucks.
Look at the 5K imac pro that can't be easy upgraded so you are stuck paying apple apples prices for ram / storage. Also at the end of year that 5K cost may be a very bad ripoff when intel does big price cuts to keep up with amd.
He's not going to see a dime from this. If you can't afford the game, hey, maybe save up or just don't get the game. That life lesson will go a lot farther than some millennial mamby pamby ass "here are some free keys because I know some of you can't afford this game" bullshit. How about, saving some money and paying for the game or going outside and playing in the real world because you can't afford to get this game. Both will take these people a lot farther than some welfare handout which has been proven to not work. You give something away for free and you quickly create the exception that it should be free.
Try it, bring in pizza for the office 3 Fridays in a row, hell, just 2 and you'll see your cow orkers will be expecting free pizza on the next Friday.
It's a marketing gimmick at best and a poor way to run a business.
99% of the keys were sold straight to key resellers like G2A and the pirates just torrented the game.
But now that he's giving it away, I am forced by principle to pirate it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But I think I'll buy a copy, whatever it is.
If all companies were this astute and ethical, the world would be a better place and more companies would be profitable!
Copyright corruption is greed and greed is stupid.
Just saying.
Does anybody know how to get ahold of this guy? I would like to purchase at least one of the 3 keys he has given away if the game isnt too pricey. But I doubt ill ever actually play the game myself. I want do commend him for his actions though!
And musicians, recording engineers and newspaper reporters have no sympathy for him.
Paradigm doesn't even seem to be my style of game play, but that's not the point.
Hey, I bought Snow Leopard at retail (I think it was under $14.99), and the Mac App store gave me free upgrades from there.
https://www.fastcompany.com/1146469/youtube-monty-python-videos-boost-dvd-sales-23000
this.
Games are seen as so disposable that indie developers have trouble giving it out for free (unless you are a big well known company).
If anything, it's a smart move in the sense of acquiring new users and letting the world know about the product. Even with a free game you have to pay around $1 a user through ads to acquire a user and they usually end up throwing it away after looking at it for 30 seconds (or being a jerk and leaving behind 1 star without even getting into the gameplay because they can)
I don't even want to play the game, but i just bought it because of this.
If by "stealing" you mean, "having another exact copy of something that somebody else has", then sure, I would love it if everybody "steals" and were "stolen from". If it were possible that somebody could have my car, and I get to keep it, too, I would want as many people as wanted it to have a copy. My car, like games, are capital. A system where there is more capital is a system where we're all better off. The reason why most of us don't want people taking things from us is not because we don't want other people to have stuff, but because we don't want to lose our stuff. Gaining Intellectual Property doesn't take anything away from the person who had it. It just adds to the people who have it.
But, isn't that taking the potential away from another person to make money? Yes, it is. However, there are lots of things that take away a person's ability to make money. If everybody makes horse carts and I make a car, I reduce the ability of horse cart manufacturers to make money. But what if they're really good at it and really really like to make money from it? I don't think that most people would consider that a good enough reason to not make cars. If your business model or current occupation doesn't give you profit that you want, then it's not up to other people to help you make it work. Just find another industry. Remove the artificial barriers and let people decide if and how they would like to support your work. So, reducing the ability for somebody to make money off a product by itself is not good reason to restrict an action. Creating artificial barriers to access something for the sole sake of creating a market is a bad idea and reduces overall capital. If a product is good, then there will be a natural model for it to make money.
So, what about the incentive to create good works of art or games, etc.? I believe that thinking is a more recent invention. There has been literature, works of art, games, and many other types of intellectual exchange long before there was a government restricting access to it. People sometimes make these things for fun, or as a hobby, or by commission from somebody who just wants them to exist. However, not everything that is free as in liberty is free as in beer. There's lots of FOSS out there which is made by people who do get paid for their work. Sometimes, the software is made by people who just want it to exist and be shared. Sometimes, it's to share support. Another example is convenience. I just bought a book the other day from a book store that contained nothing but works in the public domain. I knew that I could just as easily go home, take a copy of the table of contents, and download the whole thing myself and print it out if I wanted and be completely within my legal rights. But the book was there, and at a good price, and I liked it. They made a profit, and no copyright law would have been required.
Sure, there's content out there that may be better because the extra funding that copyright laws provide. Also, I think that maybe having some protections for inventors to allow them to recoup cost of development can help provide an incentive. However, I would rather have both those good things gone than to have to endure the current copyright situation where Disney holds copyrights on things generations after the creator it is dead (which they copied originally from the public domain). However, even in the most proper use of copyrights, you aren't exactly taking away a thing. It may be illegal, and that may make it wrong by definition, but it certainly is not harmful in the same sense as stealing a car, and may instead actually benefit society as a whole.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
We should be able to do this with everything we can't afford. Food, water, rent, paychecks, etc. Just think of how much better the world will be with everyone doing this, even nation-states.
Wonder if half the audience could even survive if forced to live on the honor system? A system good enough for the starving artist, but not the lowly pirate.
It's that simple, and Jacob knows it. He's setting the example for the greedy to pretend to take to heart.
I simply could not afford a copy of the CAD software, and at that time there was no 'student edition' available, so I pirated the best known CAD package at that time to use on my PC to help me in my study And no, I am not proud of being a pirate, but just to state that there are bad times where one has to do what is not legal to do in order to advance oneself
1. Create game
2. Pirate crack game
3. Give pirates a few legit copies
4. Story gets picked up on Slashdot
5. Free advertising!
6. Profit?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad