Owlboy devs are "very happy" people are playing, even if they pirate it

Galactic

It took almost ten years for D-Pad Studio to make Owlboy, "the retro-styled sidescroller you didn’t realize you needed." That's a hefty investment of time and effort by any measure. But D-Pad programmer Jo-Remi Madsen said in a recent AMA on Reddit that he doesn't mind too much if people pirate the game rather than pay for it, because sometimes that's the only way they can get their hands on it at all.

"When it comes to piracy, we're certainly not cracking down on anything, we're very happy people get the chance to play the game. Through torrent, the game has a chance to become available to people who, say, live in countries where it isn't easy to even buy games (maybe Steam doesn't support their currency, or they just don't carry credit cards)," Madsen wrote. "I'd still wish for those to be able to experience Owlboy. Right now, pirating the game is the best alternative they have, as it's totally open to anyone with a sturdy internet connection. Since we're not a big company, it doesn't impact us in the way it would AAA."

Steam is the undisputed king of digital platforms, he said in a separate post, but GOG's DRM-free approach has some upsides too. "I don't have any numbers when it comes to piracy, but I do know that some people who did pirate it, went on to become die-hard fans, spreading the word on the game, which leads to more sales," he wrote. "I've never pirated myself, but situations sure can vary from country to country during hard economic times. My only wish is for people to continue playing and enjoying the game, through whatever means necessary."

D-Pad isn't an especially well-heeled studio: Madsen said that half of the team stayed as his parents' house, rent-free, for more than half of the game's lengthy development period. "We've had VERY few expenses, most businesses would not be able to run at a normal pace with the assets that we've maintained," he explained. "Most of our trips have been covered because we've held presentations, or we've simply applied for funding (my country, Norway, is awesome like that)."

But now, with Owlboy successfully released—and quite good—the studio has "enough funding now to continue making games, and we owe it to no-one but ourselves, my folks and our fans." Piracy or not, you really can't ask for a better outcome than that.

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Replies • 3

Suléimano

Casual

Reminds me of Hotline Miami's devs where they actually made an account on piratebay and posted the game there so people can have an easier time pirating it.

I think the mindset that they have towards pirating is that people who pirate games can't afford buying every game they like and instead they pirate it, which doesn't matter since they wouldn't buy the game either way if pirating wasn't an option, so its no harm done i guess, since they will play it for free or won't play it at all, and if they really like it they will gather some cash to buy it or just tell others how awesome it is and results in other purchases from people who can afford them.

I don't think everyone does that though in terms of pirating, some people probably have money but don't bother purchasing it since they can torrent it.

But i do respect their thinking, it's usually indie devs who has this humble mindset (Except Phil Fish, fuck that guy). It makes the devs more likeable for me and at the very least i encourage people who have some spare cash to support indie devs like these if they like their products, since they actually seem to care in making a game.

IXxK2xXI

Lunar

wow that nice ;:D

hbarkas

Kuang Grade Mark Eleven

There's no way to protect against piracy in the long run. The praised Denuvo copy protection was cracked by CPY in six weeks in the case of Inside.http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/game-cracking-scene-speeds-up-efforts-against-denuvo-protection/

As copy protection isn't cheap it's only an option for big studios/publishers to gain some time to cash in after release. So if you have a good game there's not much gained by copy protection as die hard pirates will just wait for the DRM to be removed by a release group.

If you have a shitty game it's in your best interest to copy protect the game as the early adopters have to pay full price and as word spreads about how bad the game is you've already made your cash.

There's a huge downside to DRM as it renders games unplayable when the specific copy protection becomes obsolete or the copy protection leads to problems running the game on certain hardware configurations.

In fact for many games the pirated version is superior to the official version because of this.

If developers/publishers think they MUST have copy protection they should consider to remove it after some time to avoid these problems as the monetary gain in keeping DRM ad infinitum is minimal.

Owlboy devs are "very happy" people are playing, even if they pirate it

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