Nicest game developers ever?
Well, this is unexpected. The Pirate Bay usually receives pushback from game studios rather than being utilized as a promotional tool or, in this case, a way to please the masses. This especially holds true for indie developers, who often aren’t backed by an established publisher and rely on game sales to stay afloat.
Acid Wizard Studio is one such developer, comprised of three friends from Poland. In a case of extreme guilt, they’ve decided to release their top-down horror game Darkwood in its entirety as a torrent on The Pirate Bay. It seems to be collecting mostly positive reviews on Steam, and Ray dug what he’s played of it, but Acid Wizard explained their reasoning on Imgur.
“Steam lets you refund a game if you haven’t played it for more than 2 hours, and as a developer we can see the reason why people refunded it. When we read the explanation from someone who wrote that he needed the refund because he didn’t want his parents to be stressed out when seeing the bill at the end of the month… well, it made us feel quite bad.”
They’re also hoping it will combat a major issue that plagues developers upon a game’s release: key reselling. They explained they’ve been inundated with emails from scammers requesting keys for fake YouTube channels or blogs, and then turning around and selling them on key-selling sites. “To be honest, we’re fed up with it,” says Acid Wizard. “This practice makes it impossible for us to do any giveaways or send keys to people who actually don’t have the money to play Darkwood.”
So, in a kill ’em with kindness move, the studio has released their own torrent, DRM-free and completely safe, with the latest version of Darkwood and “no catch, no added pirate hats for characters or anything like that.” They’re also urging players who enjoy the game to consider supporting them by purchasing it on Steam, GOG, or the Humble Store. I would urge you to do that as well.
Darkwood creators upload the full game to The Pirate Bay so everyone can play it [PC Gamer]
