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.

Comments

Best of luck, buddy

[TimothyHollins]

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.

Re:Best of luck, buddy

[gweihir]

There are a lot of artists and entertainers that survive on the goodwill of their audience. It happens to be the traditional model. Of course, that does not mesh well with the greed and fantasies of supremacy of the large content monopolies, because it is far cheaper to push a small number of artists as the hottest shit, while neglecting all others, in particular those with smaller audiences because their material is not mainstreamed. As such, the content monopolies actually are very bad for the arts, as they actively oppose diversity. One effect of that is that I never felt the need to pirate even a single bit of music, the stuff in the mainstream was just to universally bad that I lost all interest.

Hence this guy understand what each actual artist and entertainer does: You live by the good opinion of your audience, and all that want to pay you something will do so. Trying to force the others is not only futile, but long-term counterproductive.

Re:Best of luck, buddy

[MangoCats]

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.

Re:Best of luck, buddy

[KGIII]

I don't even game. I am going to go buy a couple of keys and give the game to my friend's kids.

Why? Because that guy's actions are one of the realistic, viable, acceptable ways to respond to piracy.

Re:Best of luck, buddy

[Dutch Gun]

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?

Re:Entitlement at its best

[Anonymous Coward]

Total nonsense. So all the hours spent developing the game initially are free? No opportunity cost? It'd be much more accurate to say, "how many keys did the developer expect to sell? Divide that across (total number of hours to develop the game) x (dollars per hour that the developer values his time) and now you've got something meaningful.

You apparently believe that someone who spends hours and hours crafting something should do it just for the love of it, and they obviously have nothing better to do with their time.

Re:Entitlement at its best

[KGIII]

> As many on here will tell you, if you're making more than it costs to produce the game, you're a greedy bastard.

No, we don't even have that many retarded people. You expect them to break even? If they make more than 0 profit, they're greedy bastards?

You might find a more amicable audience at a site called Reddit. I highly suggest you visit there. You'll like it.

Re:This guy knows the business!

[CronoCloud]

Why do you need to get a hold of the guy when you can just fricking buy the game on Steam, it is even on sale

http://store.steampowered.com/...