Games Company Releases Version For Pirates That Forces Them To Fail Constantly, Irony Lost On Pirates

This is a fascinating little blip that popped up this morning and bears a mention. Games company GreenHeart released an $8 game called Game Dev Tycoon. The creator, Patrick Klug, sold a few hundred copies and, as a special treat, released a torrent of the game with a special feature built-in: after hours of play, the little virtual game devs would get a sales report that said pirates were stealing the game so much that the company was going under. Hilarity ensued.

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Gamers with the pirated version resorted to complaining about the product on various forums, wondering why their choice to pirate an $8 game was coming back to bite them. To wit:

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Sadly, all of this irony still didn’t make GreenHeart games much money, as over 90% of the users downloaded the pirated version. The creator made just $2,140 as of yesterday. Hopefully all of this attention is getting Klug a little more cash, but it’s a sad situation when an industry that lionizes the indie refuses to pay for the products they champion. Information wants to be free, to be sure, but Krug needs to eat.