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| Yo ho ho... and a free game? |
A couple of days ago, I saw Eurogamer running an article
about a company, Greenheart Games, which
made pirates pirate their own games...
It actually makes a whole lot more sense than you would think.
Game Dev Tycoon is a game about making games – a game development simulator, and the change
they made was to introduce piracy in pirated copies of the game. Essentially
this takes the form of a random event, whereby sales will begin to decline
eventually making it impossible to run a profit.
Even more amusing is the fact that Greenheart Games have
revealed forum posts of people asking how to combat the piracy in their games,
with questions like "Guys I reached some point where if I make a decent game
with score 9-10 it gets pirated and I can't make any profit”, and even asking
if it is possible to research DRM with which to combat this piracy. While the
irony here is of course amusing, more important is whether people understand
that a mirror is being held up to their own actions, and start to realise that
copying games (and other media) really is hurting the content creators out
there, and small companies like Greenheat Games in particular.
Whether this will have any impact on piracy remains yet to be
seen, however I fully applaud the attempts here, and I do not think that there
could have been a better platform from which to do it. I can only wish I had
come up with the idea first!
You can read the full article here; http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-29-game-dev-tycoon-forces-those-who-pirate-the-game-to-unwittingly-fail-from-piracy
And the company’s blog where they talk about it here; http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/
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