The developer behind $8 PC and Mac title Game Dev Tycoon has targeted pirates by torrenting an altered version of its own game.
The 'cracked' version of the game dev sim has been tweaked so that torrent players' virtual studios go bankrupt almost immediately through rampant in-game piracy.
The developer said that although it could've released a more straightforward anti-piracy message, it didn't want to pass up on a "unique opportunity of holding a mirror in front of [game pirates] and showing them what piracy can do to game developers."
It wrote on its blog: "When we released our very first game, Game Dev Tycoon 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."
The cracked version is nearly identical to the full game apart from one detail, the developer explains.
As torrent version players grow their own dev company, eventually they will receive an in-game message warning them about the amount of players stealing their virtual game.
"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," Greenheart wrote.
Some of the responses the developer found online included a user post complaining that it's "not fair" that so many pirates steal their in-game title, and another asking if researching virtual DRM could help with the issue.
"Surely, for most of these players, the 8 dollars wouldn't hurt them but it makes a huge difference to our future!"
The developer feels it's important for studios to try and engage with pirates, and it's even published a page on its website which targets people who search for illegal versions and attempts to persuade them to buy the full game instead.
Gamers who dislike DRM or the emergence of 'pay-to-play' models should buy, not pirate, independent games like Game Dev Tycoon, it argues.
"If pirates are put through more trouble than genuine customers, maybe more will buy the real game. Sadly, for AAA games it is currently the other way. Customers get the trouble with always-on requirements and intrusive DRM, while pirates can just download and enjoy. A twisted world."
Comments
46 comments so far...
flyfletch on 29 Apr '13 said:
Well done, you should have uploaded a virus to the scum bags computers and sorted them right out. Something activated when they go bankrupt.
I have no time for these thieving scum bags, its even more despicable when you realise this guy didnt even draw a salary. Should be ashamed of themselves.
totakeke on 29 Apr '13 said:
see, this is the kind of inventive anti piracy measure I really like!
Stan_Goodspeed on 29 Apr '13 said:
"It's not a bug in the game's code. It's a bug in your moral code"
MisterBedo on 29 Apr '13 said:
Interesting and amusing, but ultimately pointless.
hynsey on 29 Apr '13 said:
Hahaha, this is brilliant!!
jodders on 29 Apr '13 said:
Well haha! Art imitating life! That's really well done! I'm sure the determined pirates will find a way around this.
Why are these pirates so peeved with this? BECAUSE THE ARRRRGH!
Barca Azul on 29 Apr '13 said:
very good
starvinbull on 29 Apr '13 said:
Forcing pirate players to confont the mirrored consequences of their own actions smacks of genius. The entitlement that pirate players show in asking for help from the developer makes it even more illuminating.
I never understand why people defend basement dwelling pirates who endanger the survival of decent game companies.
RustySpoon80 on 29 Apr '13 said:
More devs should take note. Punish the pirates and not the buyers.
I remember Batman:AA had some code in it which removed Batman's glide ability when pirated.
freds1 on 29 Apr '13 said:
Haha, ahh I love that
Will the pirates take on board the message though? They'll probably just look for something else. Or wait for the pirated un-pirated game to be uploaded by another pirate..........or something.
jodders on 29 Apr '13 said:
So maybe instead of DRM and other measures would these be a more feasible anti-pirating method over the long term?
Flooding torrent sites with altered versions of the game?
I don't know about the technicalities of such measures but it must seem more satisfying to hit these buggers where they live than punish legit gamers?
CDS on 29 Apr '13 said:
I this on their blog this morning and thought "Well done to you for being proactive in preventing piracy by hitting the gamers with a mirror."
It's a shame more companies can't be like this. Instead of forcing people to pirate the game by being anti-consumer, make it more difficult for the pirateer by having an 'altered' cracked copy.
LiamT on 29 Apr '13 said:
because not everybody can afford to buy all the games they want. i used to pirate years ago but stopped once i could afford to buy what i wanted.
remember that piracy doesnt always harm. just because someone pirates doesnt mean its a lost sale, and sometimes seeing a copy makes you want to buy it. also, downloading was often a way to find out if you liked the game. 'try before you buy' as was seen on many pirated games.
but if you can afford to, you should buy.
shellster2 on 29 Apr '13 said:
you don' have the 'right' to have a game if you can't afford it. Save up and then buy the game you want, a which point it's probably reduced in price anyway. Game demo's are the best way of deciding whether you want a game, not piracy.
oOPuPPeTOo on 29 Apr '13 said:
Is It just me or dose anyone else now want to download this just to see it working.
Knight on 29 Apr '13 said:
That argument for pirating really gets my goat!
I would love to have a few flashy cars, a wardrobe full of designer clothes, to take my friends and family on extravegant holidays throughout the year, but I can't afford to do so. And you know what -- I don't steal the clothes, break into houses for car keys or become a drug dealer to fund an extravegant lifestyle, I just have to learn to live without. Why do pirates think that they're entitled to consume other people's goods without payment or their permission.
And to 'try before you buy'? That's what demos, reviews and trailers are for. If I go to the cinema and not enjoy the movie, so what? It's all well and good pointing out that playing may make you want to buy the game, but how can you if you can't afford it? Or why bother once you've completed it?
Anyway..... back to work.
MisterBedo on 29 Apr '13 said:
My guess is it's the big ship and sharp cutlasses.
Knight on 29 Apr '13 said:
Mind you, there's promise of 'booty'.
TheLastDodo on 29 Apr '13 said:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TommyRef ... 18/188683/
Good read here, blog by one of the guys that made Super Meat Boy, how piracy affected SMB's sales and why apathy and refunds are worse than piracy.
Not saying I agree with it all but he has a point.
save_us_daj on 29 Apr '13 said:
Almost as good as Serious Sam 3's giant invincible pink scorpion. Genius.
FishyGinger on 29 Apr '13 said:
I read that up until
And then stopped because that seemed a daft statement to me.
LiamT on 29 Apr '13 said:
im going back to PSX when you didnt have demos really. as i say getting a copy of something you have no intention of buying doesnt harm sales. same with music. anyway, im a good boy now and have been for almost 2 decades
LiamT on 29 Apr '13 said:
see my last post as demos werent available back then. they are quite a new thing.
the difference is that stealing a car removes the car from the owner. cloning a game isnt stealing anything. ok, so a sale is missed but only if you were going to buy the game in the first place. many of the copies i played only got an hours play and were binned. i wouldnt have bought them in the first place as i was a broke student.
im not advocating piracy but it happens and chasing and hounding kids is pretty poor. look at the US music industry, getting their knickers in a knot over torrenting yet they dont pay their own artists for adding music on compilation albums and are reckoned to owe their own artists several billions $s in royalties. hello mr pot, meet mrs kettle.
anyway, back to work for me. BTW... all of the good movies i have pirated in the past have now been bought on DVD/BR. so i have more than paid it back and i have a catalogue of 2500 dvd and BRs so they do pretty well out of me
wezbit on 29 Apr '13 said:
Its not piracy when you put your own game on torrent site, its just trolling.Serves you right to do that.
Mobius Evalon on 29 Apr '13 said:
The specific example post of a pirate running into the "DRM" presented in the screenshot seems far too staged to me. There is a minimal-to-zero chance that anyone would so perfectly play into their anti-piracy measure like that and I'm personally going to regard it as someone within their own studio posting it for the forced irony to drive home their point.
At any rate, I think piracy has its place. Games like SimCity should be pirated to hell and/or boycotted. This always-on crap was apparently cooked up and implemented by Maxis themselves, so they deserve the punishment of not getting consumer cash for such a stupid "feature". Pirating an $8 indie game, though? You smug, entitled little bastards.
Down with robots on 29 Apr '13 said:
Nice idea but sadly it will go over the heads of most of the people playing the game.
Samurai-Don on 29 Apr '13 said:
The developers must really underestimate the pirates as they will find away around the problem.
Skullet on 29 Apr '13 said:
It's ironic that Greenheart should complain so much about people stealing it's work, as it looks like they weren't opposed to stealing other peoples work, I haven't played this game but it seems more than a bit similar to Kairosoft's Game Dev Story, even down to the name.
nb_nmare2 on 29 Apr '13 said:
... They're really not? There were tonnes of demos for games on the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad, etc back in the 80's, it's just you generally had to buy a magazine to get hold of them.
Demos for PC games have been available on the internet since the early 90's, though often they were labelled "Shareware versions" rather than "demos" (see early ID games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and early Epic games such as Jill of the Jungle and Jazz Jackrabbit).
Imaduck on 29 Apr '13 said:
This and the Serious Sam DRM are fantastic. DRM done right. That brings the total up to 2
Mmmmgrolsch on 29 Apr '13 said:
Samurai-Don on 29 Apr '13 said:
But the pirates still win anyway as they can easily find away round the problem or just not bother playing the game. Remember pirates don't intend to buy the game at all so prevent them from play the pirated version isn't going to make them buy it.
TheLastDodo on 29 Apr '13 said:
I forgot to say it earlier but it is ironic considering this game looks to stea.........sorry "borrow" a few elements from the incredibly similar looking yet released years before, Game Dev Story.
They've lost a bit of sympathy from me.
disgustingtramp on 30 Apr '13 said:
Does anyone here actually think that anyone that was going to play a pirated version was EVER going to stump up the dough to buy the retail?? I reckon that is naive, they would of just moved onto the next game....One pirated copy does not mean loss of one sale or any sales, these are people that just want to play for nothing...Maybe they are broke, maybe they don't think games have value, maybe something else entirely and they are massive thieves, scum of the earth or whatever....but they weren't ever going to buy the full game.
They might feel like there is some kind of moral victory here, lets try not to kid ourselves, pirates will just move onto something else and its just less people playing the game, which overall, I can't say whether or not that is a good or bad thing for the games industry because word of mouth is as important as any other method to sell games to people. Unless people are naive enough to think that pirates are only friends with pirates and not people who are happy to pay full price for their games of course.
Mmmmgrolsch on 30 Apr '13 said:
Who said they were going to buy it? That's not the point. These scumbags have just wasted hours playing something for no reason, only to hit a brick wall
no one has the right to play games.
Also I've got to laugh at the people who say yeah but they can't afford. If you can't afford then tough s**t!
Solm on 30 Apr '13 said:
You don't need money to play games that's why we have free to play
FishyGinger on 30 Apr '13 said:
This and then a bit more of this. They're a luxury.
The 'it's not exactly stealing' line is bulls**t too. They have loans/publisher funding so they need to sell a certain amount to break even then more for a profit and funnily enough pirating it doesn't give them money. If you're not interested enough to buy it why bother wasting your time playing it at all?
starvinbull on 30 Apr '13 said:
Tycoon games are not necessarily original in and of themselves. Any industry/activity could be made into a tycoon game.
The best original recent example of this is Zombie Tycoon which if it were copied nobody would doubt it had been. However, pop music tycoon, game dev tycoon, prison tycoon, in my opinion are not really copyable just on premise alone.
sonic_uk on 30 Apr '13 said:
I can't progress further...help.
I can help you out here. BUY THE GAME YOU SCUMBAG.
Stigweird85 on 30 Apr '13 said:
I have been hearing great things about this game but have yet to pull the trigger on an actual purchase, this anti-piracy thing sealed the deal for me.
I love anti-piracy measures like this.
wezbit on 30 Apr '13 said:
"Buy the game you scumbag"?... are you mentally retarded or just plain ignorant? Even the guy making the game has admitted to Pirating himself! does that make him a "Scumbag"? I reserve that word for Paedophiles, Rapist's, woman beaters and Murderers! People who Pirate software are redeemable. I have pirated games before, but I have contributed thousands of pounds to gaming over the last few years. If I badly want to play a game and I am broke I will Download it and when I have the money I will buy the game strait the way no questions! does that make me a scumbag?
vectra on 30 Apr '13 said:
Tried the demo, this game wouldn't be getting any press at all if it wasn't for this piracy feature.
Glad there is a demo however, many of the bigger publishers could learn a thing or two about this. PC games that don't have demos really grind my gears especially when my PC sits close to the minimum specs borderline.
disgustingtramp on 30 Apr '13 said:
Yes its hilarious that some people have no money...hahahahahaha! Poor people? what is all that about?? hahahahaha It's a great joke shared all over the western world isn't it....*eats creme cake*
I'm one of the people with money that couldn't give a s**t about piracy or its greatly exaggerated effect on the games industry and I buy all of my games.
Mmmmgrolsch on 30 Apr '13 said:
Eh? Who's laughing at poor people? I've spent most of my life being poor. The truth is you have to buy the things you want. There are hundreds of things I'd like in my life that I can't afford, that is just tough s**t for me I'm afraid. Good thing is though all games become affordable to pretty much everyone who can afford a console.
I'd understand if game Publishers gave the games away as charity for poor people but they didn't.
Also I'd doubt very much that most people who pirate are poor at all, I mean most piracy is done on the PC. If people are pirating when they own a gaming rig then I'm pretty sure they could afford a fiver for a AAA game....
Btw I'm not saying all pirates are doing it because they want free games. A lot do it because of DRM, testing their rigs to make sure it works first etc.
Skullet on 1 May '13 said:
I mentioned it earlier in the thread, having now played the game it's a blatant Game Dev Story rip off, they have fleshed some stuff out a little more but not enough to disguise the fact they have basically stolen Kairosoft's game. I think Greenheart making such a fuss about piracy is massively ironic considering they themselves have stolen someone else's hard work.
vectra on 1 May '13 said:
Thanks to this article I checked out the demo on PC and then I checked out Game Dev Story which is available on Android. Ended up spending $2.50 on Game Dev Story for Android and have been happy with it.
Runs well on my low-end handset and so far has had me quite gripped.