http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-...
Previous discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624727
Interesting article that after reading it made me go out and buy the game (so a solid marketing effort too!)
That is, it's not that it's hard to work around his change, but that many people that could or would have done so may not have known it was needed. Of course, I'm sure that situation didn't persist.
The gymnastics are mostly about just trying to figure out whether we're bad people or not - because everyone else's favorite game is Shame the Pirate - but once you realize you're not a bad person and that you're okay with doing something illegal then it all just sort of fades into the background.
Doing illegal things makes you a bad person.
This isn't some fight against tyranny, it's theft (or illegal copying, more specifically).
Bad != illegal.
A legal system that reflects everyone's moral system 100% of the time has not been invented yet (and is likely impossible).
Illegally copying content is not one of those scenarios.
That said, its still a grey area moralistically.
I do not see a small indie developer and a large corporation in the same light as the corporation is taking advantage of the hard work of its employees to make a profit.
I was on the edge of my seat waiting for him to say something like "We used the pirated version that we released to communicate with all the people who pirated the game and we were able to convert 30% of them into paying customers!"
But it didn't happen... It sounds like he just used it to really subtly hint that the people should have bought the game. Seems like a wasted opportunity. I feel like a popup that said something like this would have converted a bunch of people and turned the pirating problem into a marketing opportunity: "Haha, you are playing a pirated copy of this game, that's why you are losing all your money to game pirates. Its all good, but if you upgrade to the paid version this problem will go away, here is a link to buy the game. Happy gaming!"
Anecdote:
This reminds me of the anti-griefer mechanism I put in to heyreddit/reddit roulette back in the day.
If you received a verified report (following a forced match with myself), you would only got matched with other griefers.
No-one realised why the penis-to-chat ratio was so low, but its because eventually all the penis flashers would only be exposing themselves to each other.
Of course, if I had told people that they would have actively tried to get around it :)
Yes, the downside was a manual verification step :(
I think there is more to this pirating scenario though. A lot of people probably pirate games because because they aren't sure if they will like them. Once they are at the point where they are losing the game because of the pirated version, they already know they like it. Some of the people who get to this point will want to pay the $8 because they won't want to risk putting more effort into the game and losing progress again because of the pirating. Other people will be more comfortable paying because they no longer have to worry about paying for a game that they won't play.
Even if they convert only 10% of the pirates, they will have increased their sales more than 33%, making them over $800,000 more money.
Maybe they could "leak" a few different torrents in future and do some testing! :)
Instead of going and tell them "I know you pirated our game. Please don't do that." they made the game simulate the consequences of piracy to game development studios.
Instead of having the someone tell them they are wrong, the player comes to that conclusion themselves (hopefully).
What I think they should have done was used it as a marketing opportunity and given the pirates another opportunity to buy they game and get more value after they have already been playing it and know they like it. (Get more value by removing the severe pirating problem within the game so that they can progress farther)