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comment by cgod

First off, no one pirated the game. The company put a copy up itself, you can't have anyone steal what you gave away.

Second. would nearly so many people have "pirated" this game if they hadn't pulled this publicity stunt. I understand that pirating is a problem but pretty sure the majority of people "stealing" this game heard about the clever twist in torrented copier and wouldn't have touched it otherwise.

Third. The developers pretend to take a stand against DRM that lessens paying players experience and claim to not have any DRM on their game. But they also say that with purchase you get three copies of the game. Only being able to download three copies is a form of DRM. Not saying DRM is right or wrong, just that these Devs are trying to get credit for not playing the DRM game while using DRM. I might be wrong about the three copies, if I am it's because the DEV's were unclear in their language.





user-inactivated  ·  3986 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There's really not a way to twist this around and make independent game developers the bad guys. You can try all you want but the fact remains that they're just trying to sell a product they put time and money into.

    First off, no one pirated the game. The company put a copy up itself, you can't have anyone steal what you gave away.

This is a semantic that completely misses the point if you actually believe it.

cgod  ·  3985 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Please, the "pirates" were unwitting participants in a marketing campaign.

If you want to pick on semantic bullshit look no further than the dev's anti DRM screed while they only allow three installs.

The developers will continue to talk about how much "pirating" is going on which will mostly be a result of their clever marketing campaign. I'm not saying that the dev's are bad guys, hell they are very clever guys, but one thing I'm not going to do is feel bad for them. This game will do much better because of it's marketing. The marketing is an obvious ploy if you would just look at the fact that the "pirated" version's save is convertible to a paid version.

You say I'm making a semantic argument, I say you are naive. These guys have struck upon a good way to get press and free demo installs for their game. They have preyed upon hot button topics like piracy and DRM to do it, topics which are automatic front page fodder on most game and tech sites.

user-inactivated  ·  3985 days ago  ·  link  ·  

No, no, ignore the DRM argument. Separate issue. The ""pirates"" were just trying to download a game so they could play it for free. I'm not particularly judging them -- I'm just saying the fact that it was a component of a (brilliant) marketing scheme doesn't change that they were stealing the game and definitely aren't the victims that you make them out to be.

Meanwhile, yes, I can still feel bad for the devs, because they had a good idea and will make some money/get exposure because of it -- but what about the last five games they've released? What about the next few? Just because they had a good idea doesn't mean they lose my sympathy.

cgod  ·  3985 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There are no victims here. I don't pirate games and I have donated money to free to play games like Dwarf Fortress. Pirating is wrong. It's good to oppose game piracy but there were no victims here.

user-inactivated  ·  3984 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not in this particular instance, but I will always side with the devs. 9 times out of 10 they are victims.

supertod  ·  3986 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm pretty sure someone else would have uploaded it if they hadn't due to the game's lack of DRM.

Also, it mentions that the game starts normally then after investing some time into it it gradually begins to fail. I don't know about you but I wouldn't steal it to check out the clever twist.

cgod  ·  3986 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If you buy the game you only get three installs, there is no lack of DRM on this game. I think limited installs is the worst type of DRM around.

They put the game up on the torrent sites, the game hasn't been pirated. It's good marketing not piracy. Their game would have been pirated, but this story is all over the web, of course people decided to try the "pirated" version because of the little game media frenzy. I'm sure that this stunt will get them many more sales and many more instances of fake theft then they ever would have gotten without it.