Game Developers Prank Pirates With Pirated Version of Game

A pair of game developers created a "Video Game Development" simulation, a tycoon-style game, but set in the world of videogaming. Players had to bring a "game" to market by acquiring talent, testing it, keeping under budget, and so forth.

But they also themselves released a cracked version of the game to BitTorrent. In this cracked version of the game, the game development studio would actually go bankrupt, inevitably... because all of their games were pirated and they made no money.

Those playing the free game then posted on forums, asking how they could beat the pirates to keep the game company alive.

The developers counted-- about 95% of their players were actually themselves pirating the game.

The experiment's more of a prank than any kind of study because this does seem to be the sort of game that few would buy, thus holding down the number of bona-fide owners.

But it is sort of funny that people who'd stolen the game posted on forums asking how to stop people from stealing their games.

posted by Ace at 07:27 PM

| Access Comments