Hotline Miami a fantastic indie game created by 2 people for the PC, and it was torrent so much that the creators just gave up and even provided customer support for the pirates in hopes that they will buy the game.
The game is pretty good though, in fact, one of the best games of this generation, so in the end it ended up selling really well. How well? 130000 units in seven weeks and when you consider the price of $9.99 it’s not so bad, is it?
“It has been torrented to such a staggering level, and given the file size of it, I mean, you can’t really be surprised, right? You could pass this thing around on the world’s smallest memory stick, so it has been torrented to extraordinary levels.”
And for helping out the pirates, the studio’s reasoning was that Jonatan Söderström “didn’t want people playing the buggy version of his game however they got it. He wanted them to get the patch. He basically said, ‘I’m not going to criticise this, it’s a fact of life. It would be nice if guys could find it within themselves to pay for it, but that’s the world I’m in, so you know, you just have to take it for what it is.'”
Steam has really helped indie games sell well and reach a great audience so in a way it’s a great platform for them.
Thanks, Eurogamer.