‘Game Dev Tycoon’ Finds Interesting Way To Punish Pirates

Game Dev Tycoon is the computer game that has been released with a built in way to beat up on those who would pirate the title.

Software pirates are the problem that no one seems to know exactly how to deal with. The United States government tried to pass draconian measures that would have hurt the average user more than more competent pirates.

Software makers still admit that something must be done. Greenheart Games has taken it upon themselves to come up with the solution that works for them.

Game Dev Tycoon is exactly what it sounds like. The point of the game is to try set up a virtual gaming company and try to lead that company to financial glory.

Greenheart Games took an interesting approach to teach a valuable lesson to those who had a problem paying the $8 for the game up front. The game developers got ahead of the pirates by actually placing a cracked game on several high trafficked pirating sites.

This cracked game has coding in it that will actually tank the game for those that didn’t buy it. After playing for a while, the game will pop up with the message, “Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally.”

Players are then warned that they will go bankrupt if the piracy continues. The crack speeds up the piracy rates of all games created and the player loses the game.

While this is an entertaining way to go about handling a difficult problem, Greenheart says that its statistics show that 93 percent of the people who are playing the game got it illegally.

That means that the cracked game could very well be mirroring what will happen to the company if more people don’t decide to reward the developers for a job well done by paying the $8 price tag for the game.

Game Dev Tycoon was released April 28 and is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.