Pirates Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
We posted this story earlier today in our Gaming News Round-up but, since so many of you sent this one in, I decided it needed a post of its own. This is comedy gold:

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.
Click to expand...
 
Since they released the torrent themselves, it's not actually piracy.

I'm sure the publicity they get from their obscure game due to "piracy" will benefit them more, than any sales they might have theoretically lost due to piracy.
 
We released a cracked version of the game ourselves, minutes after opening our Store.
Click to expand...

Bzzzzt. This makes their "cracked" version legal and their message false. In other words, you just gave them free advertising under false pretenses.
 
from the screenshot this game looks sucky. wouldnt bother pirating. is it zynga or something?
 
Its a game that is for sale and your supposed to buy. I dont really see how them releasing it stops it from being piracy. Your still supposed to buy it???
 
techrat said:
Bzzzzt. This makes their "cracked" version legal and their message false. In other words, you just gave them free advertising under false pretenses.
Click to expand...

This IS the preferred way to do the crack/pirated detection though. I've had apps like Titanium Backup claim the license wasn't valid only to work after restarting my phone, so whenever I see something like 'so and so app detects pirates and tweets to everybody you are a pirate' I think 'Great....until it screws up and does it to someone who actually bought it and a bug makes it think you didn't.'

This way the only people that will have it happen to them are those that really and truly got it off someplace other than the official Google Play store.
 
ekuest said:
from the screenshot this game looks sucky. wouldnt bother pirating. is it zynga or something?
Click to expand...

It's a complete ripoff of Game Dev Story (which was a great game, albeit for smartphones)...making the "piracy" story even more ironic.
 
MavericK96 said:
It's a complete ripoff of Game Dev Story (which was a great game, albeit for smartphones)...making the "piracy" story even more ironic.
Click to expand...

Wow, I didn't click through to the link so I actually thought this *WAS* about Game Dev Story doing it just based on the photo of the game it was talking about.
 
Generally I think publishers whine overmuch and I dislike being saddled with borked DRM.

Got to admit though, this is comedy gold.
 
And since he used to pirate games back in the day 'because the distro was so poor' he is a complete hypocrite. So it was OK to pirate back then (i.e. when it didn't cost him anything) but not now (when he is possibly losing money).

And as said it is not even piracy but a poor advert.
 
mach1.9pants said:
And since he used to pirate games back in the day 'because the distro was so poor' he is a complete hypocrite. So it was OK to pirate back then (i.e. when it didn't cost him anything) but not now (when he is possibly losing money).

And as said it is not even piracy but a poor advert.
Click to expand...

And if they hadn't released their own cracked version to torrents... Well, it's like I tell people who bitch about downloads: What's worse? People downloading your shit because there's a demand for it, or finding out not one single person wants your release badly enough to try to make a torrent for others?

I doubt their photocopy game would even be torrented had they not put one up themselves.
 
Game developer rips off a game, gives it away for free while claiming the free copy is the pirated version, complains that no one wants to buy his rip off game since he gave it away for free, proceeds to justify his own history of piracy.

wtf.
 
So much like other Tycoon games there's a fair share of make believe to make the game work, in this case piracy makes your company go bankrupt.

That said, is it bad that looking at that description they posted I want to avoid it all costs? All the capital letters scares me a bit, but then saying VIRUS FREE, TROJAN FREE, NO SPYWARE makes me think it's fake :D
 
Anyones else notice that he says "a minute later my torrent client looked like this" and then when you click on the screenshot uTorrent makes it clear that the torrent has been running since "a day ago" and the other two have been running for "18 hours"?

Seems dishonest.
 
Fact is the more they push drm and cloud bs the more powerful pirates will be. Geez I remember a old game called oblivion I purchased and had no copy protection nothing ! They got my money now all these other fools um lol I got the programs but they got no money from me.
 
A free version was made available. As with many free versions of things....it comes with advertising.

This kinda thing happens all the time. What makes this so different that it becomes news?
 
Hahaha this story made my day. People download a cracked copy of the game and then find out that they've been set-up for a fall. I hope they all enjoy watching their companies fail within the game. :D
 
timta2 said:
Anyones else notice that he says "a minute later my torrent client looked like this" and then when you click on the screenshot uTorrent makes it clear that the torrent has been running since "a day ago" and the other two have been running for "18 hours"?

Seems dishonest.
Click to expand...

When people say "I'll be there in a second" or something similar they aren't being literal. It's a figure of speech - a stylistic choice.
 
The game is pretty fun, I picked it up today and have already played like four hours. :)
 
prndll said:
A free version was made available. As with many free versions of things....it comes with advertising.

This kinda thing happens all the time. What makes this so different that it becomes news?
Click to expand...

Except that they accuse those who took the free copy they made available to be pirate.

Kind of dumb
 
Actually Game Dev Tycoon is pretty decent. I've had it ever since it came out. It's not really a rip off of the android version. The concept is the same but there are big differences. Kairosoft is a Japanese company and I haven't seen them make any changes whereas Green Heart has made a lot ever since they started developing this for the Windows 8 platform at first. I could be wrong.
 
Hornet said:
Except that they accuse those who took the free copy they made available to be pirate.

Kind of dumb
Click to expand...
Doesn't matter. Even if the argument was really dumb, they've gotten a lot of attention on Steam community and other places.
 
The developer doesn't appear to care if the people that torrented the game feel they are in the right or not. He even states that he is not mad at them. He just shows everyone some data about the sales of the game versus the pirated numbers, then goes on to inform people what affect pirating has on game development and where pirating is leading the game industry. It is an informational article not a rant against piracy.
 
Kaitian said:
Doesn't matter. Even if the argument was really dumb, they've gotten a lot of attention on Steam community and other places.
Click to expand...

This isn't about piracy at all. It's not even about game development. This is a Hollywood/tabloid stunt for the "look" of things. It's to get people talking about something that doesn't even matter just for the purpose of talking.

This entire situation represents the very thing that I take such issue with. This is crazy. If it's all going to be this way, then what's the point in doing anything at all? I have better things to do than listen to a bunch of idiots moan about things they themselves don't even care about. They can have their "on-the-surface" B.S. While they're all arguing over mindless braindead minutia...I'll be taking care of business and getting things done.

Gentlemen: is this really what you want and what you seek in your gaming? Is it really worth your time and your money?
 
Played the demo...thought it was really just a copy of Game Dev Story. Looking further into the matter, the game gets much more advanced and differentiates from Game Dev Story, but that portion is not able to be shown in the span of the demo.
 
Novulux said:
Played the demo...thought it was really just a copy of Game Dev Story. Looking further into the matter, the game gets much more advanced and differentiates from Game Dev Story, but that portion is not able to be shown in the span of the demo.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be the part of the game you'd want to see in the demo? Something to convince you that it's different enough to shell out the cash for? Well no wonder they can't get anyone to buy their game. The people they have handling the marketing are idiots.
 
Electronic Arts errr. I mean Electronic Mass Production bought Sega of America and my military/simulation shooter Crysis 1,2, and 3 went to shit. I never got to release it on NES. :(



This game is rigged :mad:


























:p
 
Claiming that the dev's "put the game up for free therefore it's not piracy" is like saying the undercover hooker on the street technically gave away her services so you cant be arrested. It doesnt matter where the source came from, if it's illegal to download the game then they broke the law. I can tell half of you are the kind of retards that probably think "it's just 1's and 0's, nothing is being stolen, just replicated hurrrrr". If you want to play semantics, then go sue the dev for pirating their own content and putting it online.

Anyway, the downloaders clearly THOUGHT they were stealing the game, so the intent has been proven. The question is whether all those who downloaded it would have purchased it anyway or just ignored the game. I for one am not interested in this game and will not purchase it. I also have not downloaded it. If someone tossed a thumb drive on my desk today at work saying 'hey check out this game' and I played it for 5 minutes, does that make me a thief? No, because they were never getting my money in the first place.
 
McFry said:
Claiming that the dev's "put the game up for free therefore it's not piracy" is like saying the undercover hooker on the street technically gave away her services so you cant be arrested. It doesnt matter where the source came from, if it's illegal to download the game then they broke the law.

If you want to play semantics
Click to expand...
I would like to play semantics actually.

Now the difference between this and your hooker analogy is that there actually is a crime associated with the "solicitation" of a woman, basically asking her for sex in exchange for money is illegal. The act of copyright infringement can only be carried out if you are in fact infringing on copyrights, and when the company holding those freely gives them out then they legally can not hold you for infringing copyrights. It doesn't matter if it's through their website or www.thebestpiratesiteintheworldfreegames.yo.

This is one of those instances where copyright law isn't so fucked up (well ok it is) but there's no laws that say it's illegal to get something you think might be illegal (but it isn't) Otherwise why wouldn't a bunch of studios put their own stuff out on the internet, collect tons of IPs then go sue happy with everyone? Because they gave it away that's why. This is like the cop fucking you, and then you leaving some money to buy something nice for herself because she was such a good girl, and then you getting busted for prostitution... it ain't going to ever go down that way.
 
Due to the cleverness and attitude behind this idea, I decided to go ahead and buy this game even though I don't plan on playing it much. This deserves to be rewarded.
 
dgingeri said:
Due to the cleverness and attitude behind this idea, I decided to go ahead and buy this game even though I don't plan on playing it much. This deserves to be rewarded.
Click to expand...

It's pretty fun though, I don't know how long the fun will last. But it's worth $8 bucks either way. :)
 
McFry said:
If someone tossed a thumb drive on my desk today at work saying 'hey check out this game' and I played it for 5 minutes, does that make me a thief? No, because they were never getting my money in the first place.
Click to expand...

You lost me at this point. If you walk into a store and steal something that you wouldn't have paid for if you had the money, does that make you a thief? Yes.

Really theft, in my opinion, isn't as good a metaphor for piracy as trespassing might be. Does a person have a right to keep you off their (intellectual) property? Even if you wouldn't diminish their value of it by trespassing on it?
 
. We know this because our game contains some code to send anonymous-usage data to our server. Nothing unusual or harmful. Heaps of games/apps do this and we use it to better understand how the game is played. It’s absolutely anonymous and you are covered by our privacy policy. Anyway, the cracked version has a separate ID so I can separate the data.
Click to expand...

This pretty much killed any chance of me trying even the demo. While I don't condone piracy, preaching ethics while you're spying on users tends too make your point a bit moot.
 
Wrecked Em said:
This pretty much killed any chance of me trying even the demo. While I don't condone piracy, preaching ethics while you're spying on users tends too make your point a bit moot.
Click to expand...

It could be worse...

ea-origin-logo-530.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top