The "Not Worth a New Thread" Thread.

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Game Dev Tycoon pirates complain about games being pirated.

When we released our very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) yesterday, we did something unusual and as far as I know unique. We released a cracked version of the game ourselves, minutes after opening our Store.

The cracked version is nearly identical to the real thing except for one detail…

Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high change to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.

http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/

So if you play a pirated version of the game then the software you create in-game gets pirated so the game is harder.  Not an entirely new idea but brilliantly appropriate here. 

Better still are the people contacting the devs to complain about the in-game piracy not realising they are exposing themselves as pirates.

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This isn't the first time i've heard this being done either.

I'm not sure how i feel about it.

Crackers and pirates will just upload the legit version anyway.

And i'm sure posters on Torrent sites will know the legit versions from the crippled versions.

Seems a bit of a waste of time really releasing a cripped version.

Will be interesting to hear the dev's views on whether it's had any impact on sales or not.

TMC

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Seems a bit of a waste of time really releasing a cripped version.

Will be interesting to hear the dev's views on whether it's had any impact on sales or not.

Looking around the net I would bet that's it's had a hugely positive effect on sales.  Most of the main news sites have run with the story and the devs website has been down most of the time since due to being overloaded.  Free publicity and all that.

It might not have been their original aim, but it might turn out to be a stroke of marketing genius.  


FWIW I can think of a few positives of releasing a pirated version of your own game too although it's probably not worth the effort for most of us

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Saw this sculpture on Wired and thought it looked really cool....the wire web giving the illusion of a billboard being there.  


http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/22/ghost-billboard

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TMC