Avast! Developers Released Pirated Version of Their Own Game

[theoverall]

Co-founder of tinyBuild here.

Just a thanks for featuring it on the Escapist. It's the top3 site that I read

- Alex

 

[SemiHumanTarget]

This is what everyone gets wrong: They think pirates are just malicious A-holes who want everything for free.

The reality is a lot of pirates, maybe even a majority, pirate because they can't afford it otherwise. Pirating is a risky business and no one that does it a) 100% expects to come out of it unscathed and b) feels entirely good about it.

The moral of this story, I think, is that it doesn't take a whole lot to push someone over the edge of committing to a purchase when they otherwise would have pirated or just skipped the title altogether.

Funny how it's always the indie developers going the extra mile to convince people not to pirate their games in a positive way. It's always the EAs of the world that, who don't even need the money, that immediately jump to invasive spyware and malicious lawsuits.

 

[Kekkles]

Awesome game + awesome advertising = moneys. Go figure?

 

[Aeshi]

I'd do the same thing, except instead of making the changes visible, I'd just slip some spyware into the torrented version and get the pirates' real names and addresses. They choose to pirate the game, all bets are off.

And once word got around in pirate circles that there was a bad copy of the game out there doing that, I imagine that would discourage some of them from torrenting.

Of course, I wouldn't let on that I myself had leaked it...

And the best part is they can't call you out on it because they can't admit they illegally acquired the (technically modified) copy.