There's no getting around piracy. It exists. It's like every other thing out there that has been around for ages, from prostitution to wallet thieves to trolls, it's just not going away over night. The really bad part about piracy isn't piracy itself but usually the ways companies try to “fight” piracy. In their attempts to control illegal copies of products it 100% of the time hurts legit consumers, so much so that legit consumers have to revert to pirated copies of a product to bypass the crappy DRM that prohibits it from being used by people who paid money for the product (i.e., Batman Arkham City and GFWL). Well, Dennaton Games took a different approach to piracy than say, EA or Ubisoft, instead of fighting against the pirates they encouraged them to update the torrents so that pirates would receive the latest, fixed version of the game. Why would they do this? Because every new player, pirate or not, can still be a potential fan, and the best form of advertisement is positive word of mouth from fans.
Many studios look at piracy in the form of this great evil they must combat and lock down. Smaller, indie devs have instead started looking at piracy as people who may or may not ever pay for the product but work as a gateway to positive press, and for Dennaton Games' Jonatan Soderstrom and Dennis Wedin, fighting against the pirates was not something they were willing to do. I guess, in their minds, they make more headlines working with pirates than against them...and it worked. Here's what they posted on one of the torrents for their game...
I'm Jonatan Soderstrom, me and my friend Dennis Wedin made this game. We're working on an update that hopefully will take care of any/all bugs, and we'll try to do some extra polish in the next few days. Would be great if you could update the torrent when the patch is out! It'd be great if people get to play it without any bugs popping up.
PC Games and GameSpy are a few of many who are reporting on Dennaton taking the fight out of the piracy war and instead aim to make peace, it's instantly made a lot of gamers hold their heads in shame and go out of their way to pick up Hotline Miami, the retro-themed action-noir game that has been receiving tons of critical praise around the gaming circles from both gamers and critics alike.
Sos Sosowski did a similar thing with his game, McPixel. Not only did people feel like he was a hardworking dev who deserved to be supported but that he was also a good guy for not going all lawyery on the Pirate Bay folk. By working with them he not only exposed his game but also found himself in the good graces of many gaming communities as well, resulting in his game being the first Steam game to get the greenlight, as well as making Steam's Top 10 chart for a while due to all the explosive press surrounding the game.
As for Hotline Miami, the game is currently available on Steam right now for only $10, so if you feel like supporting devs who like supporting the community, feel free to pick up a copy from the Steam Store.
