Project Zomboid has gained a cult following since it released earlier this year. Like all indie games, it relies entirely on dedicated support from fans in order to survive. So when people decide to pirate the game, it's going to hit the studio pretty hard. Hard enough to force the three-man team to take the game offline.
It's worth noting that the game being stolen costs a measly five bucks. Stay classy, gamers!
"We’ve always turned a blind eye to pirate copies, even on occasion recommending people who had problems with the legit version try a pirate version until the issues are resolved," said the team. "We realise the potential viral benefits of pirate copies, and while obviously we’d prefer people to purchase our issue is not with those."
The issue is with an exploit that's been released, allowing people to steal the game en masse simply by clicking an "update" button. The Indie Stone team has had to take the game down due to the risk of losing the money it made back on development costs. Hopefully the game is back soon with tighter security measures, because people have been enjoying the game and I think it's only fair the guys who made it recoup their investment.
Seriously, when a game like this gets hit, especially with developers who have previously been so cool about piracy, I think it's safe to say that the pirates involved went from morally grey individuals to straight-up shitty little bastards.
Sorry we’ve had to take the game down for the day [Project Zomboid, thanks Pancakesremo!]
Contest:
11:00 AM on 06.18.2011 | 
... and yes, pirates are why we can't have nice things.
Pirates have absolutely no ethics or morality. All they see is "I want, I take" - they give absolutely no consideration to the fact that if they continue taking, no one will bother "creating".
Companies then freak out and put excessive DRM in the games.
Pirates point to DRM as an excuse to pirate.
Like that Jack White sang, "You can't take the effect and make it the cause"
For most beings who aren't an altruistic anthropomorphic accumulation of digital information, though, it takes money to be able to afford to keep making more of this information that wishes to be free(the ingrates!).
If these data e-mancipators want the information to be free so badly, they should just buy its freedom by purchasing the rights to it then distributing it for free online.
Five. Dollars.
Where the fuck is society headed?
oh and pirates fuck it up for everyone etc. etc.. etc...
"Most pirates are simply thieves... no more and no less."
Except.. you can't actually make that absolute comment.. because it's not always true. I know it hurts to hear it.. I know I'll make no friends here. But, oh well. I'm not really here to make online friends, apparently.
"... and yes, pirates are why we can't have nice things."
This doesn't really make any sense.
"Pirates have absolutely no ethics or morality"
Oops, I think what you meant to say is.. they don't have YOUR morality or ethics. It's a common mistake people make.
"they give absolutely no consideration to the fact that if they continue taking, no one will bother "creating"."
Oh come on now.. I think we both know that isn't true.
I'm not saying this doesn't suck.. but to pretend like things are any worse then they were previous to this instance is ridiculous. In fact right there in the article it says "We realise the potential viral benefits of pirate copies." Hey look, it's not always doom and gloom!
I really do wish the best for these guys. I hope a little added security helps them out and they can make butt loads of cash, or whatever it is their goal is.
But (and I know I'll really take flak for this).. I don't understand why it's always the small indie devs that people give a shit about. If this was a big AAA game nobody in their right mind would bother writing a story up about this. I'll never really understand why a company that has hundreds and hundreds of employees is looked at without care.. but a studio with 5 guys and everybody sheds a tear. Makes no sense to me.
The fact they've taken it offline is just because of a burp in their security that meant that you could extremely easily pirate it with no downsides whatsoever. Which I think you'll find the majority of people would do, like it or not.
"Except.. you can't actually make that absolute comment.. because it's not always true. I know it hurts to hear it.. I know I'll make no friends here. But, oh well. I'm not really here to make online friends, apparently."
Actually, yes, she can make that comment. By definition "pirate" means to use un-ethical means to take something that isnt yours. Also- way to say she was wrong but not post any argument defending your side.
"they don't have YOUR morality or ethics. It's a common mistake people make. "
Yeah its a common mistake people make. When people walk into your house/store/database and take stuff and then they say, "I don't believe what I'm doing is wrong". Judicial systems all over the world make that mistake DAILY.
"but to pretend like things are any worse then they were previous to this instance is ridiculous."
The whole article is a CASE - POINT example of what happens because of pirates. Things ARE WORSE then they were previously.
Its nice how denial is a justification argument nowadays...
That's all well and good, but you didn't really explain WHY being a pirate doesn't always make you a thief. All you basically said was 'Nuh-uh' like you were in kindergarten.
I wanted to point out one interesting quote that so far has gone largely unnoticed in the story:
"The possibility that [piracy] raises awareness and promotes the game cannot be ignored, but the difference is offline versions on torrents, which we’ve been largely unconcerned about, do not cost us real money, only potential money, and even then we can’t really guess at what the net effect is. "
That's from their blog. Even in the face of losing money on account of pirates costing them Cloud server fees, they do not believe that pirating offline copies of the game is doing real harm to their business. I happen to agree with them there.
In any case, I hadn't heard of this game up until now, but they'll definitely have $5 from me once it's up again.
I wish pirates would kill themselves
Pirates are thieves. Theft is taking something that you haven't paid for or own without consent. That's what pirates do and some take it an extra step and sell it.
Pirates are the reason we can't have nice things is because a little thing called "DRM", which is widely regarded as absolute pain in the ass. Digital Rights management was implemented to protect companies' games from being pirated and stolen.
Yes, pirates have no morality or ethics. Last time I checked, everyone agrees that stealing is wrong and is immoral and unethical.
Listen kid, in the real world there is something called "money" and it is needed to survive. People do something called "work" to make money and survive. There are people who make video games because they love making video games would love to make money making these video games. People work hard on these games hoping to make money in order to make more. If they didn't make money from their hard work, it would be hard to make more.
The potential viral benefits that these devs wanted is to actually have people pay attention to their cool game and be able TO PAY MONEY for their game. They are NOT saying "STEAL OUR GAME WE JUST WANT ATTENTION WE DON'T CARE IF YOU DON'T PAY".
Indie games developers don't have as much money as the big AAA-making companies so it is A BIG FUCKING DEAL when someone steals from the little guy. Big developers have money to survive, they don't live on every purchase made.
In closing, STFU.
"Yeah its a common mistake people make … Judicial systems all over the world make that mistake DAILY". He wasn't saying that judicial systems are wrong for punishing people. He's say saying Elsa shouldn't assume that because someone doesn't share her ethics doesnt mean they don't have their own ethics.
Brain hurts.
This is an unfortunate tale but the fact of the matter is in the video fame industry pirates are almost always the minority and therefore are only as big of a threat and an issue as we make them out to be. It's an individual case. For example, I highly doubt the guys over at Bungie are gonna throw a hisstly fit because Halo: Reach was pirated because they know they made their money back a couple times over and the pirates had almost no effect on their return whatsoever. That's the common side of the story. Even people like Ubisoft who make pirating out to be this heinous phenomenon also know that Assassin's Creed 500: Ezio Escapes From Mars is going to be a blockbuster regardless. On average the people who are the most vocal about pirating are the people the least affected.
Then you have the rare cases like this where the pirates are actually a sizable minority, if not the majority, and the developers actually are losing revenue. Then, yeah, I think you can point to piracy and say "This is what could've been but pirates fucked it up." What's most interesting to note here is that the devs actually didn't discourage piracy. They knew it was a losing game. Rather they tried to work in hand with it. What bit these guys in the ass was their distribution method. Their cloud-based distribution made it so whenever someone pirated they lost money because they had to pony up for hosting. Had they chosen another distribution method I doubt anyone would care, including the devs.
I'm not blaming the devs at all. The pirates are clearly at fault. What I find interesting is how totally okay they were with it until the cloud-based distribution started to bite them in the ass. Meanwhile, multi-million dollar corporations who make back what they put in tenfold are trying to act like piracy is this venomous plague and gamers are acting like piracy is leading to some sort of decline in gaming (that has yet to be specified by anyone who makes that claim).
Strange times.
Also, $5. I can afford $5. Christ.
Out of curiosity, how old are you? I have read plenty of your comments and they tell me something about yourself.
Even he said he recommended pirated copies to people at times. His concern was with the update feature. One that you can't blame the writers of the pirated copy for adding to make it more user friendly, but unexpectedly caused trouble.
I have pirated copies of many software that I own. Sometimes they just work better.
I wouldn't waste any time responding to runtheplacered's post. It's either shitty flame-bait(last paragraph pretty much gives it away) or completely clueless ideology.
The reason people are paying more attention to this small indie company is the fact that with only a few people they put out a great little game for only $5 and due to piracy they weren't making a profit and had to remove the game they had labored over. AAA games won't, and oftentimes CAN'T just be taken off the market and they will always make a profit anyway. This is a big deal because piracy is no longer just a little nagging bitch in the mainstream market but now it's hurting the indie market.
Likewise.
Next time, Jim, report the whole goddamn article, instead of chunking out the interesting parts that might get more hits. (like you tend to do)
Thanks.
And lately hackers have really really tried to build their image as being pathetic little douches... -.-'
"He wasn't saying that judicial systems are wrong for punishing people. He's say saying Elsa shouldn't assume that because someone doesn't share her ethics doesnt mean they don't have their own ethics."
yeah he was. Elsa didn't claim her ethics- she said steal was wrong (which is legally true through all parts of the world). Its not about ethic codes, its about applied eithics. just because MY ethics say drunk driving is okay- legally (and morally) its bankrupt.
@runtheplacered
successful troll. im done.
Everyone who misses the old days where a lot of games for PCs where released, that actually where crafted for PC and the not Casual Mass should punch the next pirate he sees. Maybe at some point we are rid of them and we get core games for PC and Core Gamer again.
I am among these people.
I wouldn't have pirated this game, because they seem like fine people that aren't trying to rip me off. Those are my ethics.
Before anyone gets on their high horse, I am an artist, specifically a comedian, a writer, and a cartoonist, and I have no problem with anyone pirating my work for their own use. Just don't put your name on it or try to make money off it. That is all I ask.
There isn't a long line of people trying to pirate my work, but even if the unthinkable happens and people start to care about my work, I still won't have a problem with people seeing my work for free.
Yeah, but by ripping the game of with a click from the cloudservers the devs have to pay for you pirating it. Thats not very funny.
Here is your bill, pay 100'000 Dollar because millions of people had traffic on your server.
And you would of course be like "Whow, fun! :3"
I torrent music, I torrent comics, I torrent overpriced software *cough*photoshop*cough* but I do not torrent games or movies. I also tend to pick up one or two of the albums I torrent just to support the band, but I am sure as hell not paying 1 dollar for every goddamned song I ever listen too...otherwise my iTunes would be worth 25grand...
As for comics, it's just way too hard to get a hold of older issues and the current digital services for the medium are utter shit.
But stealing indie games is just the ultimate shitty move...you wanna gank shit from Activision go ahead, I wont judge, but throw the little guys a goddamned bone.
You do realize that creating a games usually takes a team of people who work fulltime for it for months. You know, they need to eat, pay their rents, etc.? Do you think its too much to ask 5 dollars for a lot of work?
but...this...no. Actually wait, I'm not surprised at this.
Since when would nobody write about piracy if it happened to a big developer? Where the hell have you been man?! We've been given almost daily updates about piracy and hacking taking place against developers of all shapes, sizes and repute.
I find it hard to believe that piracy at its current pace will have no effect on the coming landscape. Piracy helped shape the current, your just looking at it with a jaded false sense of entitlement that most people who's argument smacks of guilt.
DRM... priority DLC... online passes... these are all products of previous piracy. If the trend increases momentum so to will the restrictions. Its not the money that bothers me, its the fact that people able to pirate will always pirate and make things worse for people who pay for the product. You don't think it matters because you're already stealing whatever you want. If you were able to draw that moral line of distinction between yourself and your community things would look different.