An interesting blog/article about piracy in games.

[Iceglow]

I thought that this blog was an interesting read to do with piracy and gamers.

discuss.

[Cloudane]

A very clever idea, executed far too quickly. It would've made more sense to let people puzzle over it for a bit and come to the conclusion on their own rather than giving the response the next day (though I question the mental capacity of those who didn't pick up on the game's point straight away and had to actually ask online, to be brutally honest). This makes me wonder if it's more of a publicity stunt than anything else.

I do like their "educational rather than vindictive" approach to it though - it sounds like the author did a bit of pirating himself in his past, and this does wonders for being fair and keeping things in perspective instead of acting all sanctimonious about it and suing the backside off some poor kid's family. IMO the world needs more of that approach.

[Wolf Kanno]

This kind of reminds me of Dark Souls release where some pirates got the game a few days early and From Software responded by releasing an end game high level creature into all of the starter areas, making it nearly impossible to get far until the game was officially released and the creatures were removed.

Its an interesting article, and I kind of liked the social experiment of it all. Though I kind of wonder if the game actually has a real ending or was it created to eventually have you bankrupted by pirates no matter what. Still it was a gutsy move and I do think this creates a more accurate view of the pirating issue. It will be interesting to see if they add the ability to make DRMs or "always online" models and let the game kind of reflect what's really going on in the industry.

[Pumpkin]

It was a good read. I've never actually pirated a game but I can imagine putting a year/a few years working hard on something and being proud of it and having it be successful, only to have people steal it and you still just end up failing in the end anyways .

[Pike]

Huxley and I bought this game after reading the article a couple of days ago and it's great.

[Madame Adequate]

Yeah it might have been a publicity stunt but it was a damned good one. Far more effective to ruse and get some publicity than just trying to come down like a ton of bricks on pirates. I doubt I'd have paid any attention to this game without this happening, but then I bought it and so did Pike, so that's two sales they gained from their stunt regardless of the effect it has on pirates!

"Can I research DRM" is truly hilarious though.

[Slothy]

Have to agree with you MILF, though I also don't believe DRM really works at all, so getting some notoriety with humour is always going to be preferable to me.

[Iceglow]

There is a separate article they linked in that one that I read too, that article dealt with the prospect of putting an expansion together it was tongue in cheek but it literally did have the idea of DRM and In-game DLC contents.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I'm considering buy the damn game just because of their stunt.

[Shorty]

This is pretty smurfing amazing and ballsy, and I really respect the developers for this stuff. It makes me want to just buy the game to help them out (though I'm not terribly interested in playing it). Good for them.

[Del Murder]

Great stunt and great marketing. It gave me a chuckle.

[Quindiana Jones]

Game Dev Sims are amazingly addictive and I strongly suggest you all buy it.