Game Developer Trolls Software Pirates

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Monster Rain**

http://www.gamezone.com/news/2013/04/29/real-pirates-get-trolled-with-in-game-piracy-in-game-dev-tycoon

Piracy is an ongoing problem. While companies try various tactics to combat it, sooner or later, someone finds their way around it. Worst of all, a lot of these precautions tend to hurt the actual paying player, than they do pirates (see: SimCity). That's why this story from Green Heart Games is both hilarious and absolutely genius.

GHG recently released their game developing simulator game, Game Dev Tycoon. If you're at all familiar with Game Dev Story for the iPhone or Android, then you'll grasp the formula for Tycoon. On the day of its release, GHG also released a cracked version and uploaded it to "the number one torrent sharing site." Why you ask?

See this version of the game was slightly different, as it was plagued with in-game pirates.

The cracked version is nearly identical to the real thing except for one detail… Initially we thought about telling them their copy is an illegal copy, but instead we didn’t want to pass up the unique opportunity of holding a mirror in front of them and showing them what piracy can do to game developers. So, as players spend a few hours playing and growing their own game dev company, they will start to see the following message, styled like any other in-game message:

Hilariously enough, users started posting about their issues with piracy, obviously revealing that they themselves have pirated the game. One of these posts looked liked this:

There is an obvious irony to all of this. Pirates crying for help for not being able progress through the game because of piracy. It was truly a genius move by Green Heart Games to employ such a tactic, but it's certainly not the first. I remember Serious Sam 3 having an impossible enemy appear in the first level of the game, not allowing anyone to progress further.

I can't help but think this is the best way to keep pirates at bay, while rewarding those who actually pay for the game to enjoy it to the fullest, without relying on logins and server issues.

Kudos Green Heart Games, kudos indeed.

This is pretty hilarious.

**kirsanth**

Good stuff!

**pretre**

The images really help tell the story here. From the game:

The dumb melon-fether who outs himself:

**CthuluIsSpy**

And thanks to this article, pirates are now aware of these counter-measures :slow clap:

**pretre**

Pretty sure most of them got the idea even without the article...

**thenoobbomb**

Ah, I'm going to download that.
Should be fun, hehe.

**CthuluIsSpy**

pretre wrote:
Pretty sure most of them got the idea even without the article...

Not that one guy, it seems

**kenshin620**

Sadly in a bit of a ironic twist, in that game you can make a great game that no one buys.....

That game is hilariously fun though

**LordofHats**

Epic.

**Alfndrate**

I kind of want both versions of the game

**Melissia**

kenshin620 wrote:
Sadly in a bit of a ironic twist, in that game you can make a great game that no one buys.....

That game is hilariously fun though

So, just like real life, then.

**MrMoustaffa**

Truly this is some zen level trolling.

A friend told me about this at work today and I have to say this is a pretty ingenious way of going about it. Hopefully at least a few people who pirated the game realized what they're doing.

I highly doubt every guy who pirated this game will change their ways, but one can hope. At the very least, it threw the issue right in their face so they could get a feel for what it's like.

Why can't we get more "drm" like this? I remember the Serious Sam mega boss, that was all over the internet for a few days as well. I think that mainly popped up for people that were playing the game before it was supposed to release though.

EDIT: Checked out /v/ just for laughs, my god there are some angry pirates on there. I needed that laugh today.

**johnscott10**

With the whole patch process then the whole Uber boss thing is actually quite a viable option. Just release a patch on day 1 to get rid of the uber boss to stop people playing it before they should.

Piracy on the other hand is more of a problem, I mean this game was pretty small so quick and easy to DL. I don't see many of the big companies trying this form of "drm", why should they when they can "force" us to be always connected to a server.

Still purely for screwing over the pirates I bought the game. Sucked badly at it, didn't even get out the garage XD

**MarsNZ**

Must have been nice to be able to grandstand about one small victory after decades of being trolled by pirates.

**Monster Rain**

There's one now.