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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday August 27 2017, @05:44PM   Printer-friendly
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.

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/darkwood-creators-share-game-on-the-pirate-bay-for-those-who-cant-pay-170826/


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday August 27 2017, @05:58PM (2 children)

    by looorg (578) on Sunday August 27 2017, @05:58PM (#559885)

    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)

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 27 2017, @08:05PM (#559908)

      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.

      --
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      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @05:29AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @05:29AM (#560066)

        hold the pirates at bay

        I see what you did there.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday August 27 2017, @07:34PM (8 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Sunday August 27 2017, @07:34PM (#559902)

    Maybe if you weren't in the business of artificial scarcity and propaganda designed to keep people from engaging with politics you wouldn't have been struck by this predicament in the first place.

    You know what's the worse part? The people advocating copyright this and DRM that are sure they're right since they "deserve to make a living". As for the people who lose their jobs to technology they make... You know, the story-tellers and street performers before print became a thing or the theater actors before television or horse groomers before cars... Well, those people can all write computer games, design and manufacture cars and code business databases now so it's all good.

    The only thing that's worse than a leech is a self-entitled parasite.

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    compiling...
    • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Sunday August 27 2017, @08:37PM (7 children)

      by vux984 (5045) on Sunday August 27 2017, @08:37PM (#559912)

      I don't quite follow this issue. What is moral objection to key reselling? As long as they keys are legit and released by the developer; how is reselling them 'wrong'?

      I know one argument against key reselling is that it defeats regional pricing. And that's a thorny issue to be sure. But on some level you are pissing upwind trying to sell something that has no cost to transport or replicate at different prices in different places. To expect the market to let that arbitrage opportunity to sit UN-exploited is delusional.

      Are there other arguments against key reselling?

      • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:42PM

        by RamiK (1813) on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:42PM (#559926)

        Same as anti-piracy propaganda: Loss of potential revenue to the musicians \ playwrights \ actors \ game developers is discouraging the content creation that enriches our culture.

        And to reiterate, it's pure bullshit. It completely ignores they're all working in industries that hire fewer people then before the new tech got introduced and are now, as newer tech is being introduced, asking government to make people sustain their out-dated business models since they're somehow entitled to protections no other industry-workers are awarded.

        That's to say, if the loss of potential revenue is to be applied as a moral standpoint, their industries would be made to shutdown in favor of traveling bards and musician performing at pubs and concert-halls.

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      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:45PM (2 children)

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:45PM (#559927) Homepage Journal

        You sell your key, you make some money. The studio makes no money. Where's the money for the studio? There isn't any. It's like used books. You buy a book, you read it, you sell it. You get money for your used book. The author doesn't get a cut. Nothing for the author. To make money as an author is hard. You have to be very smart. You don't make money off the book itself. Not much. The book is like a big, big brochure for your real business. The book sells your business. It sells you. Brings in customers. Who bring in the profits.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by vux984 on Sunday August 27 2017, @10:34PM (1 child)

          by vux984 (5045) on Sunday August 27 2017, @10:34PM (#559935)

          You sell your key, you make some money. The studio makes no money. Where's the money for the studio?

          They sold me the original key.

          You buy a book, you read it, you sell it.

          Redeeming a key on steam etc adds the game to your library. Once you do that, you can't resell it. Until you redeem it, you can't play it. The vast majority of key reselling is selling keys obtained from X at low cost (humblebundles, giveaways... etc??) and the resold at higher cost (after the bundle is finished, after the giveaway is over, etc...). The book analogy doesn't apply.

          • (Score: 2) by Jerry Smith on Monday August 28 2017, @06:55AM

            by Jerry Smith (379) on Monday August 28 2017, @06:55AM (#560084) Journal

            The vast majority of key reselling is selling keys obtained from X at low cost (humblebundles, giveaways... etc??)

            I've heard that keys in economic less performing countries are cheaper. So 'buy in Poland, sell in UK' could be an option. But then again: I just heard it.

            --
            All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @11:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @11:00PM (#559940)

        As long as they keys are legit and released by the developer; how is reselling them 'wrong'?

        There may be cases where legitimate keys are purchased using stolen credit card details for money laundering purposes. The credit card owner notices the fraudulent purchase and issues a charge-back, but by that time the key has already been resold. The developer may then revoke the key, resulting in the one who purchased it secondhand losing access. The charge-back also means that the developer would be worse off than if the original purchase had never been made in the first place. But I agree that this does not reflect all key reselling scenarios.

        From the perspective of a customer, my opinion is that DRM is a greater issue. Some companies have included DRM like Denuvo at launch and then removed it later after a certain duration of time has elapsed; while I oppose DRM in general (especially the intrusive variants), this approach is not as objectionable. If a game permanently includes intrusive DRM then I will never purchase it. Going back on topic, DRM-free releases remove the key-reselling part of the equation because there are no keys to resell -- and no sales are lost from the ones who would never have purchased it anyway.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Monday August 28 2017, @11:30AM (1 child)

        by TheRaven (270) on Monday August 28 2017, @11:30AM (#560161) Journal

        The problem with key reselling is that selling in general is a fundamentally broken model for digital goods. Imagine that you write a book. You make copies of it, and people buy it. The number of people that buy it is, to a first approximation, the same as the number that read it. If you want to reread it, you have to keep your copy. If you lend it to someone else, then this involves moving a physical object to them and you can't read it while they're using it. Now make the book an eBook. The instant that you stop reading it, you can instantly transfer your copy to someone else, anywhere in the world. If you spend half an hour a day reading the book, then one copy can serve 48 people in parallel. As soon as you finish with the book, you can give it to someone else and then they can give it back after a few years when you want to reread it. A hundred copies of the book will easily satisfy the total lifetime readership of most non-bestseller books.

        It boils down to a simple fact: creating an original work is a costly and time-consuming process, but copying one is almost zero cost, yet we've built entire complex business models around the idea that we should do the expensive bit for free and then charge for the trivial bit. Then we pass laws to make doing the trivial bit illegal.

        --
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        • (Score: 2) by ilsa on Monday August 28 2017, @05:34PM

          by ilsa (6082) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 28 2017, @05:34PM (#560343)

          Okay, that wasn't cool. I hadn't planned on modding you up, but then your damn sig made me do it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @11:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @11:14PM (#559943)

    Copyright assignment. Contract violation. Lawsuit! Lawsuit!

    These morons just ended their careers.

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