Greenheart Games caused quite the furor with their latest work Game Dev Tycoon, which looked at the adventures of an rising developer. Essentially, for those who pirated the game, they began to see an increase in piracy for their titles towards the Xbox and PS2 generation.
Co-founder Patrick Klug stated recently to GameSpot that, “They were so oblivious that they didn’t realize that what they see is what they actually do.”
“We had this opportunity to let users feel what piracy is like. Because we didn’t tell them that it is a pirated version, they actually started posting [on forums] saying, ‘I’m going bankrupt because of piracy,’ and I think that was what really connected with people.”
While Klug realizes that there other factors at work, he does remind people that, “If you wake up years later and there are no games anymore like that, then it’s your own fault because you didn’t support the developers. If people think that they only need to pay for a game that is perfect, then the industry is going nowhere.”