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Brilliant gamesmanship!

I always love it when someone does something very clever to make a point.

So it's a big "hats off" to Greenheart Games from me.

This indie game developer has done a wonderful job of highlighting the damage that piracy does to software developers by creating a game that has rocketed to world-wide fame and left grins on the faces of many, frowns on the faces of others.

Now I'm no gamer, in fact I haven't had the time or inclination to play a computer game for many years now so I'm just going on media reports when I describe "Game Dev Tycoon" as a simulation-type game.

In the simulation, you're running a computer game development company and your goal is to create exciting new games then market them to the world.

Ho, hum... yawn. But wait -- there's a real twist to this...

For decades now, game developers have had to deal with the problem of piracy. Evil little sods take their wares, crack them and then freely distribute them via the Net and P2P networks.

Despite pleas from developers, threats from publishers and ever-more draconian copyright laws, the piracy of game (and other) software continues pretty much unabated.

Game-makers have also tried DRM and all sorts of other technical ways to stop this piracy -- but ultimately they fail and (often within hours of release), pirated copies of popular games soon pop up on the Net where anyone can download them for free.

Well Greenheart Games decided to teach these pirates what it's like to be on the other side of the fence, when it comes to piracy.

As well as releasing the game for sale (at a very reasonable $8 a copy), they also threw a slightly different copy of the game onto popular pirate networks.

The "genuine" game and the "cracked" version play the same for the first few hours, allowing users to invest significant effort in the simulation, amassing new software titles and sales within the virtual world created.

However, soon afterwards, just as it looks like the player is winning, the "cracked" version starts telling players that their virtual sales figures are dropping, revenues are plunging and it's pretty much "game over" -- due to virtual pirates stealing their games.

Yes, the pirates find out just what it's like to be the head of a software company whose very viability has been destroyed by illegal software copying.

Oh the irony!

Apparently many players of the cracked version have seen the humour in this and have opted to pay the paltry $8 required to buy the legit version -- either because they really want to play the game to a reasonable conclusion -- or because they've been guilted into doing so.

Victory?

Well not really.

Despite the fact that *some* have opted to legitimise their cracked version, there are apparently thousands of pirated copies in use but only a few hundred legitimate sales.

However, this could change -- because the real cleverness of Greenheart Games is that by engaging in this very smart piece of marketing, they have captured the attention of the world's media and thus received millions of dollars worth of free advertising by way of news reports.

Let's hope they do well -- such cleverness deserves reward!

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