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from the deadwood-'deadweight'-delights-dollar-delinquents dept.
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Acid Wizard Studio, the creators of the popular Darkwood game, have shared a copy on The Pirate Bay. The developers want to help out people who don't have the financial means to buy a legal copy of the game and also prevent them from going to unauthorized key sharing sites.
Online piracy is an issue that affects many industries, and indie game development is certainly no exception.
While some developers see piracy as an evil that needs to be rooted out as soon as possible, others are more open to the motivations behind it.
The average game fan may not have the financial means to try out all the new titles that come out every month, for example. While these people are not by any means entitled to a free copy, sometimes the human element resonates with developers.
Acid Wizard Studio, the three college friends from Poland behind the horror game Darkwood, started thinking about this when they recently received an email from a desperate young fan.
They recount how a fan, who loved the game, asked for a refund because he was worried about his parent's reaction to the cost. They realized this was not an isolated occurrence and decided to do something very unusual in the videogame industry: make a free copy available on a torrent! The story concludes:
"We have just one request: if you like Darkwood and want us to continue making games, consider buying it in the future, maybe on a sale, through Steam, GOG or Humble Store. But please, please, don't buy it through any key reselling site. By doing that, you're just feeding the cancer that is leeching off this industry."
People who are into horror games can download a copy of the game here, or buy it here. The Imgur post with the full story of the developers, spotted via PC Gamer, is well worth a read too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday August 27 2017, @05:58PM (2 children)
While an interesting concept I don't think it will catch on in a more general sense across the whole market. But it's not unheard of, Steam as an example do hand out free copies of games from time to time (or keys for games that are then locked into the steam clients -- I snagged a few of them over the years, that said I barely play them so I don't really know why I got the keys -- but free stuff is free stuff).
In some sense one can wonder what all these creators of/or old games are doing with them after they become old and usually quite pointless. One could argue that they might as well give them away. I guess they are afraid that if they gave them away people wouldn't buy their new games, but I think people would still do that. If nothing else for the simple reason that most old games just don't age very well. Games that are just a few years old look and sound like crap compared to new and improved AAA-titles and such. Few games age well in that regard, it either has to be very original or something better have not come along. There ought to be games such as Starcraft or Counterstrike that still decades later enjoy popularity or games that are so simplistic that almost anyone can enjoy them such as Tetris, PONG, Pac-man or Space Invaders.
Interestingly by spreading it on TPB are they not then in essence paying TPB to distro their games, ads and PR and such. Other companies have released or sold DRM-free copies of their games that can freely be traded around for anyone that wants a copy. I don't recall that it has hurt their potential sales all that much. As I recall Witcher 3 was one such game.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Sunday August 27 2017, @08:05PM (1 child)
I think that's why companies still jam DRM into games. They know it'll be broken eventually. But if they can hold the pirates at bay for a while then they can completely capture the market. After the first month the sales start kicking in to get the people on the fence. Deep sales after the first year for people with less disposable income. By then the dev team has moved on to another project and has little interest in patching a year old game. Hardcore pirates would never buy the game anyways.
Witcher 3 is a really cool game. Reminded me of Skyrim. Can be a total time sink : )
Slight OT: I have two steam gift games if anyone wants them. Civilization IV and Killing Floor (the original). Just post your steamid/email and which game you'd like.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @05:29AM
hold the pirates at bay
I see what you did there.