Why you should NOT pirate games:, A developer's story. Options

[_Pax._]

http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/...ause-of-piracy/

A developer, just a start-up really, decided to take a risk .... and minutes after launching their first game, also put up a fully cracked version up as a torrent.

The trick is, the cracked version was slightly different: it smacked the player hard with, yes, softwarepiracy. Everyone who played the cracked version eventually went bankrupt; it was impossible to win.

More importantly, the "report anonymous usage data" feature of the game? Also reported which version of the software was running - legit, or cracked. After one day?

Only 6.4% of users - 214 of them - were playing legal, paid-for versions. The other 93.6% of users - all 3,104 of them - were playing the pirated version. And that, ladies and gentlemen, rather neatly puts whole buckets-full of nails into the coffin, for claims that piracy is "a minority" of game copies.

Oh, by the by? It's only an EIGHT DOLLAR game. For cryin' out loud, how stingy can you be, if you won't open your wallet for eight measley bucks? I've been homeless; I've spent months reliant on a soup kitchen for every bite of food to pass my lips; Ive slept under bridges. But never, not once, have I ever had even the most rudimentary computer, and felt that $8 was more than I could afford for a game that interested me. Not even when that computer was a mere Commodore 64, in the mid-1980s - and my weekly allowance was all of $3.

...

Okay, anyway, putting the soapbox aside. Really I just wanted to draw some more attention to that article, in a place I know is frequented by avid video gamers. I'm 90% sure there's few (if any) people here who don't already agree, but ... I'm sharing it anyway. so there!

Got a couple more places to share it at, too, so - off I go.