• Piracy

    Subversion More Effective Than Litigation Against Piracy

    We keep getting sued, but we keep doing it anyway: peer to peer networks are going strong. I don't need to tell you this; you're probably downloading the latest Evangelion hentai spinoff fansub from at least four peers at this very moment.

    GamesIndustry reports on gamedev Introversion's anti-piracy methods:

    "You can't stop peer-to-peer file sharing, so the best route to combat it is to subvert it," revealed Tom Arundel, sales and marketing director at Introversion.

    "We will release a version of our game that looks like it's been hacked at the same time as a pirated version gets out," he said.

    "Our version looks like the real game, but is in fact a demo. After the third time of downloading the demo, the P2P user will be very, very frustrated, and will do one of two things - give up or buy the game from us. We subverted the Bit Torrent network for Darwinia very successfully this way," he revealed.

    I always wonder how the developer's interpretation of "successful" measures up to the pirates'. If anyone cashed in a pegleg discount on Darwinia and got away with it, let me know.

    More here [GamesIndustry]

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