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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.
I've sold "shareware" like this... with no locks, honor system for payments. Net sales when people know they can get it for free: approximately one unit per year. Net sales when the site it was on misrepresented it making it look like you had to pay in order to get it: approximately 10 units per month. No, I didn't retire off of the income, but it was very instructive that people have the money and are willing to spend the money when they have to, but those same people, given a free alternative, never seem to remember to send even a thank-you note afterwards. I actually got more feedback and positive comments from the people who paid $9 for the app (PalmOS days) than all of the freeloaders.
Good for him. I'm going to be in the same boat as this guy in a year or so, and I've actually given quite a bit of thought to how to deal with the issue of people sharing my game. It's going to happen, so for those that want the game for free, I was thinking of releasing a special version of the game with a small Paypal button or something like that in the credits menu. But I don't want it in the retail game for paying customers. So... I dunno, upload it to Pirate Bay myself with "PayPal=true" in the game's config file? That way people can make sure they're getting a clean, signed, malware-free package as well (for instance, on Mac, the entire app is signed, data and all, unlike Windows where just the exe is signed). Maybe. I've got some time to think about what to do.
That being said, my game will be DRM-free (on platforms where I have a choice in the matter), so there won't be a need for keys. That just seems like a pain in the ass for no good reason. I did notice that this dev had a DRM-free version available too, and he joked it would have been much easier if they had uploaded that version. I wonder why he'd bother with releasing both DRM'd and DRM-free versions?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.