Pirates complain about piracy, irony meter explodes

Pirates suck. That’s something we can all agree on. Unless you’re a dirty pirate, of course. Then you’re probably too busy enjoying DRM-free games to notice what other people think of you. Greenheart Games wanted to send a wake-up call to pirates, so they uploaded a “cracked” version of their casual game development game, Game Dev Tycoon, to torrent sharing sites. This version of the game was a bit special. Hours into playing it, pirates found their virtual game development company losing money due to piracy until they went out of business.

Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally.

If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt.

Predictably, players of the pirated version of the game took to various forums to complain about the in-game piracy ruining their games. Some even asked if there was a way to research DRM in the game to foil the virtual thieves. Irony unlocked!

Patrick Klug of Greenheart Games posted the results of their experiment one day after they started it. 93.6% of Game Dev Tycoon players were using the pirated version rather than paying $8 to play the game legitimately, or even using the free demo.

If you don’t care about all of this and just want to get a cracked and illegal version then we can’t do anything about that, but if years down the track you wonder why there are no games like these anymore and all you get to play is pay-to-play and social games designed to suck money out of your pockets then the reason will stare back at you in the mirror.

For extra Inception-like zaniness, Game Dev Tycoon is an homage (some say rip-off) of Kairosoft’s mobile game, Game Dev Story. Ride the kick back up the layers!