Avast! Developers Released Pirated Version of Their Own Game

[Alphakirby]

I'll buy it when I get money,for now (Because I know this) PIRATE HATS YAY!!!
Really,that is fucking neat. Nice to see not all developers have no sense of humor. So yeah,I remember No Time To Explain as a Kickstarter project,but I didn't have any money to donate to it at the time.

I hate being poor. T.T

EDIT: This is just so hilarious,I am so buying this when I get the chance.
Arrggh I will lay ye some gold doubloons for this game when I have the money. I currently have no doubloons,nor bones,sadly at this moment,I can only enjoy ye sense of humor.

P.S.don't suspend me mods...please.

 

[steeple]

so does this mean piracy is ok if I want to play with pirates instead of the normal characters?

 

[Strazdas]

i think the autohr of the article needs to learn what piracy is, because torrent protocol and great MANY of its download is completely legal, non-piracy and acceptable. it is much better file hosting platform than sites like rapdishare due to people who have downloaded are helping you upload it too, when you are offline even.

therefore, the game is not a pirated version. infact illegal file sharing isnt piracy either. pirates are out there in somalia. we have dumb media to thank for the comparison.

people pirate it just to see, these people then find they actually enjoy the game, and buy a copy .

but, the same thing happens for ANY game, so wheres the bonus?

 

[Thamian]

Well played to Tiny Build games, though the idea of spiking the torrents with something else isn't exactly a new one. For example, a german eurodance group called Groove Coverage did it back in 2006 with one of their singles... Admitedly, that didn't quite work out when the song they used to spike filesharers with turned out be very popular in it's own right and wound up on one of their albums...

Perhaps a foreshadowing of what'll happen here perhaps?

 

[Joos]

Well, at first i thought the news was about Avast antivirus software.

I don't think the developers are aware that:

Arrr, the gamers 2 isn't it? Legendary!

 

[TikiShades]

will any other developer be able to pull a similar trick?

Ahahaha, no. I don't know, maybe a few indie developers might try something like this. There definitely won't be a habit of this.

 

[Aprilgold]

The real question is where can I get the pirate version. Its technically the demo for this title.
*Yes I ALREADY bought the game.*

 

[Smooth Operator]

Hey you guys finished it, very nice!
Will be picking this up as I always wondered how it will turn out.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

And finally someone who gets it.

There is no way to prevent information from flowing. And as much as the content creators hate to think about it all their "creative work" is nothing more than a set of information.

Unlike in the past moving information, bits, is basically free. So instead of making money on monopoly distribution rights for sets of information content creators need to figure out how to make money on the things which aren't free, but which are made more valuable by the "free" parts that are being distributed.

This isn't an easy task and it scares a lot of people but it is the future.

 

[Fetzenfisch]

its a great tactic.
another one is to flood the webs with malfunctioning versions. let them play into the game for 2-3 hours and then just remove a key part of the game. look at it as a demo version. just that people d/l 30 gigs just to find out its not more than a demo.
Drakensang did this, as did On the rain slick precipice of darkness and several others.
It was pretty common with music labels too in the big times of kazaa, audiogalaxy and emuling.
they just took 20 second loops of the song and repeated them to match the actual songs length. it annoyed the heck out of people because files that lots of people wanted spread so fast it took them hours to days to find a working one.
just hire some students that upload defective copies, students need money and maybe some lazy bums prefer to buy instead of wasting their time.

 

[Speakercone]

I'd just slip some spyware into the torrented version and get the pirates' real names and addresses

Pray tell, what standardised repository for personal information exists on the typical PC?

How about a CV? I daresay most people keep a copy of that on their PCs.

 

[RagnaThePig]

I tried the game. It's a fun concept but I am not impressed by the obvious lack of polish. I don't have a problem with buying a BETA in order to help the devs but they don't clearly say it on the website.

I mean, what's the point of having boss fights if you can't die ?

 

[Firia]

This makes me wonder if the legit version has a switch I can flip to experience the pirate version.

 

[Sentox6]

How about a CV? I daresay most people keep a copy of that on their PCs.

Sure, but it'd be surprisingly difficult to write code that would locate and parse people's CVs in a universal fashion.

Even if it were feasible on a practical level, just imagine the reaction. I don't think pirating digital goods, however reprehensible, quite warrants harvesting personal information.

 

[Speakercone]

How about a CV? I daresay most people keep a copy of that on their PCs.

Sure, but it'd be surprisingly difficult to write code that would locate and parse people's CVs in a universal fashion.

Even if it were feasible on a practical level, just imagine the reaction. I don't think pirating digital goods, however reprehensible, quite warrants harvesting personal information.

You don't need it to work universally, you just need it to work a lot of the time. I'd bet a good 50% or more of windows users would just keep it either on the desktop or in My Documents and call it something like "resume". Not the most elegant solution in the world, I'll grant you, but if you need to drive a nail...

I wonder; if companies did start harvesting personal information from pirated copies of their games, perhaps the market research alone would be worth it to them. It's an interesting thought.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I do think part of the problem with software piracy is pirates are inherently cool.

If only at the start, the big guys had decided that the term for copyright infringement was 'bestiality'.

I wonder how much less popular 'goatblowerbay' would be than the pirate bay.

'Hey, I just got Dead Island!'
'Oh cool, you buy or pigfuck it from a torrent site?'

Loses a little of its sheen right?

Anyway, I do think this is the way forward, (not that this is annoying), put irritating changes into leaked version of games, in the hope that they'll try, get into it, and find it's easier to lay down a few bucks rather than go hunting for a legit version among all the ones with silly hats, or in Batman's case, a faulty cape.

After all, where's the harm in them trying out the first hour or so of the game? Unless you're churning out annual shovelware and don't want them seeing it til they've paid up their $60.

 

[Roofstone]

Yo dawg, I heard you like Pirates. So now you can Pirate these Pirates, so they.. Can..

Yeah, that sentence got away from me..

 

[razer17]

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Anticipating that their side-scrolling time travel game No Time To Explain would be pirated, Tiny Build Games released the game to a torrent site themselves. However, pirates who downloaded the game illegally found that the characters mirrored their own sensibilities:

I'm fairly sure it's not illegally downloading if the copyright owner was the one that released the game. Torrenting does not always equate to illegal downloading, some people release copyright free music, books, games etc. on their own accord.

 

[razer17]

so does this mean piracy is ok if I want to play with pirates instead of the normal characters?

Because the dev himself released the game, that means that downloading it is legal, as far as I'm aware. The copyright owner can upload it, and if he does the file is fair game.