Super Meat Boy studio Team Meat knows that its games are hugely pirated, but it really just doesn’t f*cking care.
This is Team Meat. Listen to them do a DarkZero podcast, although not in slow-motion, because that would sound terrible. It’s pretty bad-ass. Whoa! Watch out, Team Meat! There are lots of people out there pirating your game! But Team Meat is just craaaaazy. It really doesn’t give a shit.
“Our game was hugely pirated – we don’t fucking care,” Team Meat men Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen explained. “If there are, let’s say 200,000 copies of SMB that are getting passed around for free, that’s 200,000 people who are playing the game. If they like this game there’s a really high probability of their friends coming around and seeing it or them posting about it on their blogs.”
The duo also apparently believes that shame will motivate at least some of the people who downloaded the game without paying for it. “It’s not cool to go round and say I really like this game that I stole, so they’re not going to say that,” they added. “So it’s going to come around to sales.”
It’s an unusual, although not unique, attitude toward the problem of piracy, probably borne in large part out of sheer helplessness. If Activision and EA are effectively helpless to stop piracy, what’s a two-man indie studio going to do? Might as well accept it, roll with it and hope that appreciation for the game and respect for the little guy is enough to turn at least a few takers into buyers.
via: Rock, Paper, Shotgun
