Funniest Prank on Game Pirates I've Yet Seen

[Fana McCloud]

I found one way that an indie dev decided to prank pirates of their game to be highly amusing:

 

http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/

 

Those statistics they collected are also quite sobering. At the same time I'm also curious if the trend will hold over a longer period after the game's release, because I doubt we've had enough time to see if the fabled "pirates becoming legitimate customers after liking the product" effect will kick in or if it truly is a thing of the minority.

 

I also wonder how many of those pirates are so poor they couldn't afford a game that costs less than $10. My money would be on a lot of them being kids who can't convince their parents to open up their wallets for every one of their game buying whims, so they feel entitled to torrent it instead. And most of the rest? Probably those same parents, hahaha. XD

 

Okay, maybe not that last bit. ;P

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

Thank you for posting this Fana, great find. I gotta say, after reading the article myself, I'm almost tempted to purchase it right now. The part of this that really gets to me though is that pirates will steal from ANY developer whether or not they are a start-up company or an industry giant. That makes it harder for start-ups to get anywhere, and only allows the industry leaders to force out the competition, buy them out, the later of which makes them bigger.

 

Adding to what you said about most pirating being done by kids or people who cant afford to purchase every game, I find that it is all too easy nowadays for these kids to search for and run some kind of application that will allow them to steal it by making the game believe it has been payed for. Hacking is not the same as it used to be. The old stereotype of a hacker was that this insanely smart person would sit on their computer analyzing code for hours on end. Now a hacker could be some kid who doesn't understand the implications of using a program to steal data or who downloads an illegally accessed file. While they did not perform the hacking themselves, they are promoting the distribution of the hack.

[Dr. Orange]

These developers are an inspiration for other companies. I would love to see how many Steam, Blizzard and etc. games are pirated a day.

 

But for the meantime, Greenheart...

[Faisul]

Read the article and felt bad for the developers, so I bought the game. Lo and behold, it's pretty damn good! It's really fun to try to play a development studio starting out as one dude in a basement (literally) to then scrape your way up to multiple employees, fancy equipment, better software etc. all while watching game history play out!

[Fana McCloud]

Read the article and felt bad for the developers, so I bought the game. Lo and behold, it's pretty damn good! It's really fun to try to play a development studio starting out as one dude in a basement (literally) to then scrape your way up to multiple employees, fancy equipment, better software etc. all while watching game history play out!

 

Yeah, sounds awesome. Gotta wait a bit before buying it though, not so hot for funds right now. Sim games have always been a favorite pass time of mine though. I liked looking at the screens and seeing the little mo-cap studio and the like. XD

[Faisul]

It's good for a couple hours at least! The lack of any really random events (like, this game's version of the Commodore won't actually begin to outsell and outperform the PC, becoming the dominant desktop gaming machine in the grim darkness of the far future) and the like doesn't do wonders for the game's replayability, but if you've got 8 bucks to spare it's a good way to waste your time now and then.