While most people view torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay to be the last place they want their content to end up at, a game-developer took the path less traveled and bagged a great success.
Online piracy is usually seen as a plague by most forms of entertainment, including indie games. However, the developer of the indie-shooter game “Danger Gazers” went and published a copy of his game at The Pirate Bay and ended up boosting the game sales on the whole.
The Georgia-based game developer Shota Bobokhidze, also known as “ShotX” single-handedly runs a game development studio named ShotX Studio. The aforementioned game was the latest game to release from his independent studio, currently available for sale on Steam at around $10.
Though $10 isn’t steep and is a generally affordable price-point for a game, ShotX recognized the fact that not everybody could afford the title. Therefore, he went on and released a special version for the torrent site to help users discover the game and understand the gameplay. ShotX wanted to implement the idea back in 2018 for a game name “Kontrakt” as well, but the idea got shelved after he encountered issues with The Pirate Bay.
Finally, ShotX could upload the torrent of his game on the site with a special message that read: “This is the latest DRM-free version of Danger Gazers (1.1.0), there’s no catch here, no Steam only features, just the fully functional game. As a developer, my only request would be to consider supporting and buying in case you like Danger Gazers and want more indie games in the future.”
ShotX posted the message on Reddit too while promoting the free torrent edition on The Pirate Bay. Though this isn’t a first-time for someone to upload their game on the torrent site, it isn’t commonplace.
“The decision to release a torrent came along with the memories of my time spent with pirated software. I remember that I didn’t feel any guilt at all as there was simply no other choice for me at that moment, moreover, had I known that there were other options I could have supported developers with, I’d have done all I could without a second thought,” said ShotX.
All-in-all, the plan to upload the game on a torrent site worked well for ShotX as the game is enjoying decent sales online. What’s more, this successful experiment also underlines the fact that torrent-users or pirates wouldn’t mind paying out of their pockets.
“The response so far was amazing,” ShotX said to TorrentFreak. While he didn’t expect anything in return, the free release actually resulted in a significant revenue boost.
“There was a noticeable boost in sales, some kind individuals even donated twice as much and most importantly all the rest supported me in their own ways by sharing my game and respecting my decision,” the developer said.
