Game Dev Tycoon devs teach pirates about piracy

[mameks]

What happens when pirates play a game development simulator and then go bankrupt because of piracy?


When we released our very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) 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.

This is honestly the most amusing form of anti-piracy I have ever seen, and of course entirely unique due to the nature of the game.
Best devs ever award

Source

 

[FAST6191]

I saw it being discussed elsewhere. By itself it is unique but elements of it have been tried before in different capacities (Mother 2, Batman broken glide function more recently, further back I recall an FPS had weapons randomly break, various people have "cracked properly" and seeded programs, others have encouraged and attempted to use the pirate contingent for marketing and to convert a few of them by various means).

Still it is a marketing stunt that worked out spectacularly well for them so well done there.

 

[Maxternal]

Seeing the first screen shot of a user complaint there on the source link there made me think about all the Wii shovelware I've seen. I'm sure good games are much more popular pirate targets so it's easy to think that if you make a crappy game that's cheap to produce at least you don't have so much overhead so it's safer.

 

[Rizsparky]

Cant beat 'em, join 'em.

 

[Gahars]

So they've beaten the pirates at their own game?

Nice.

 

[Joe88]

Isn't this game just a copy of game dev story anyway?

 

[pokefloote]

That's awesome. A lot of "What's the point of developing a new engine in this game if it's just going to be pirated anyway!?" responses. And they are doing it themselves.

 

[chartube12]

Fail and game breaking. Cause you know big companies do not really go bankrupt because of pirates. Pirates wouldn't have bought the game in the first place. Meaning they didn't lose any real money.

 

[DinohScene]

Problem of piracy is the media which basically "promotes" it by showing people that never heard of it images and stories about it.

However, If I was a game dev, I'd done the same.
Doesn't matter how good you secure your media, it's going to get pirated one way or the other.

 

[Haloman800]

If I pirated that and this happened to me, it wouldn't make me want to buy the game. That'd be very annoying and I'd just stop playing altogether.

 

[nukeboy95]

did they have to make a crack for them?

 

[Youkai]

I think it is a very cool idea !

Still think the biggest problem is that most games do not have Demo versions !
this game might be very interesting but I would not buy it as I have no idea if it is worth it or not !

Fail and game breaking. Cause u know big companies do not really go bankrupt because of pirates. pirates wouldn't have bought the game in the first place. Meaning they didn't lose any real money.

Well everyone says this but I think it is only half true !
I for one bought much more 3Ds games than NDS because I actually only bought games that were really awesome on the NDS now I bought a hand full of junk because I could not test it
And I am sure I am not the only one.

 

[chyyran]

I saw this yesterday, it isn't really Anti Piracy in a technical sense, the devs uploaded a copy with the modified code to torrent sites IIRC. No actual crack detection and such. Last I checked, the "fixed" version was already up.

 

[Arras]

Isn't this game just a copy of game dev story anyway?

I'll have to agree with this. Every single screenshot I've seen looks almost exactly like Game Dev Story. A dev shouldn't complain about piracy if their game is a shameless clone anyway.

 

[JoostinOnline]

I'll have to agree with this. Every single screenshot I've seen looks almost exactly like Game Dev Story. A dev shouldn't complain about piracy if their game is a shameless clone anyway.

Clone of what? The Tycoon games have been out for nearly two decades.

 

[Janthran]

Problem of piracy is the media which basically "promotes" it by showing people that never heard of it images and stories about it.

However, If I was a game dev, I'd done the same.
Doesn't matter how good you secure your media, it's going to get pirated one way or the other.

"REMEMBER GUYS. DO NOT GO TO WWW.RANDOMTORRENTSITE.ORG AND DOWNLOAD THIS GAME FOR FREE. EVER. EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN AND YOU'LL ALMOST DEFINITELY GET AWAY WITH IT. IT'S A BAD IDEA. REPEAT, WWW.RANDOMTORRENTSITE.ORG"

 

[DinohScene]

*snip*

Silly Janthran, you're getting yourself banned one day :c

 

[Janthran]

Silly Janthran, you're getting yourself banned one day :c

Don't worry, I made sure it's not an actual torrent site before posting that.

 

[Arras]

Clone of what? The Tycoon games have been out for nearly two decades.

Tycoon games in general are old, but this one is very recent, completely unrelated to any other game with Tycoon in the name and looks almost exactly like Game Dev Story.

 

[JoostinOnline]

Tycoon games in general are old, but this one is very recent, completely unrelated to any other game with Tycoon in the name and looks almost exactly like Game Dev Story.

That's what it was based off of. They wanted to make a PC version.