Pixel Piracy Devs: Anyone who wants to pirate our game will do so... It's safer to offer the link

The creators of Pixel Piracy have decided to give their game away for free via an official torrent, even though their game is up for sale.

[kornbeaner]

Just like a drug, offer the first hit for free then hope it's good enough to hook you a client for life.

[LAWSON72]

Great way to put it. I always think the pros of piracy are popularization of a game or developer. That will give them a large fanbase that helps future sales.

[mdluffy]

Pirating games is what gives PC gaming a bad name.
Hearing stuff about that indie game sold 200 times + pirated 100 thousand times.

[Corpser]

Yeah only pc gamers steal games. Hey does anyone want to game share?

[RiPPn]

Game sharing is a loophole and very limited. IF you want to make a comparison to PC pirating, using custom firmware and downloading all your games for free would be the more accurate analogy.

[Moncole]

I have to reasons to pirate a game. To try it befor I buy it or it has DRM I don't like. But I never beat games I pirate and the ones I do beat than I buy.

[mmj]

Back in the Amiga days a lot of obscure games reached critical mass due to rampant piracy, the more people pirate, the more people talk about it, the more people BUY IT.

Big publishers who spend millions on advertising don't want small games developers muscling in on their territory, stopping piracy hurts the smaller developers as they cannot get any widespread recognition.

[KonsoruMasuta]

Let's be real here. If piracy is rampant enough a developer can see a huge loss in profits. You forgot to mention that part.

There are more negatives than positives. It can keep developers from making back what they spent to make the game.

[mmj]

You're assuming pirates will buy the games if they can't download it, that's usually not the case.

If piracy hurts the industry it wouldn't have grown to the size it is today.

[KonsoruMasuta]

And you're that a person who is interested in the game wouldn't take it for free if the opportunity arose.

Most pirates have an interest in the games they are stealing. You can guarantee that some would buy the game if they had no choice but to buyit and they really wanted to play it.

Piracy does hurt the industry. Look at the PSP for example. So many games pirated to hell and some developers didn't meet expectations.

Stop trying to justify theft.

[kornbeaner]

I don't think mmj is trying to justify theft, but he does raise a point. All the big name companies always talk about piracy for the reason they shove outrages DRMs on the paying customer. Yet they are still around. Ubisoft and EA have been the major players in DRM for a while, especially on PC, yet they are still around to make the games and make money. The CEO and VP of those companies aren't exactly begging for change.

The idea of piracy is not always so black and white. You can look at game rentals as a form of piracy, I didn't buy the game, I "borrowed" it for a fee, none of which goes to the publisher or developer outside of the initial purchase of the game. I am sure rental companies make back their money within the month, that's the reason they are still around.

Used game sales can be seen as piracy, Gamestop doesn't pay the companies for the stock of used games they have, they simply buy their stock at a discounted price from the previous consumers, then mark it up and sell their stock to the tune of millions a year, none of which goes to the developers or publishers.

Just because the game comes on a disc and was initially purchased legally, doesn't make the sting of losing money any less painful for a company.

I don't believe that piracy helps the industry in anyway, except for getting word of mouth out there, real cheap advertisement if you will, but one has to wonder, this has been a problem since the beginning of the gaming industry and the industry has been able to grow at an outstanding rate, how? Because in the end, despite what the companies tell you, those who buy games far outweigh those who steal games. The only time a game company complains about piracy is when they have stopped making good games, looking at you Capcom.

Also you have to take into account that even if a high number of people pirate a game it doesn't mean all are playing the game. Just like all other types of hoarders, there will be those piracy hoarders that just pirate a game to pirate a game but will never play. Yes, it's still stealing of a product but, those people were never going to buy your game to begin with.

Piracy numbers are over-inflated and while it does suck to lose out on millions of dollars potentially, I truly believe those were millions of dollars a company was never going to see to begin with.

It's as if somebody stole a Ferrari and took it for a joy ride, yes he got a free ride and it is wrong and illegal but that is a sale of a Ferrari that was never going to be made to begin with.

[Captain Qwark 9]

for new ip's, its not a bad idea. torrents have actually been beneficial for a lot of things i like. some games i really wanna try but dont feel like spending the money in hopes i like it. then i may pirate it, if i love it, i typ end up buying all their games from that point out.

i actually plan to try this now. if i do like it, i will likely pay for it and def buy a sequel

[Activemessiah]

I think a real fan would buy the damn thing and support them even if it's available for free... something about supporting your favourite Devs just feels right for me.

[Rzep]

I am going to buy it, but not out of some misplaced pitty for poor indie devs. I will buy it cause it looks really fun.

[CLOUD1983]

Succeed to put their game in Steam is not gonna change much imo, Steam games pirated every day although they can get some more publicity I guess that's it.