What happens when pirates play a game development simulator and then go bankrupt because of piracy?

I appreciate that your guys have put a lot of work into this, and your point about piracy stands. But the similarity to that game is always going to haunt you. Having not yet played your game, I cannot comment on the game mechanic (the demo will be downloaded this evening, my work probably would frown upon it now). It especially doesn’t help with the fact that game-cloning is so common practice nowadays, that a similar game like yours will be lumped into that catagory.

If no one can ever improve on an idea then we waste a lot of potential. anyway this was discussed a lot on reddit. We did not clone the game. We were inspired by it.

And Call of Duty ripped off Medal of Honor, who ripped off Doom… Really this is how the games industry works, you make a game and often its influenced heavily on previous games but this game is hardly a copy. GameDevStory is far more arcade like whereas this game is far more like a business simulation. They are similar and yet unique. Hardly a rip off.

Loved the idea fwiw, though I agree it would have been way more effective with an in game purchase option.

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Well thats explains it. I was gonna mention that this looked awfully similar to A “Game Dev Story,” and maybe might have been also humorous if after you create a really successful game, "similar"games come out shortly afterwards. Its great what you guys did though.

Personally, I think the industry just needs to find ways to make people want to buy their games instead of file-sharing, that means DLC worth paying for, and not forced DLC that takes away from gameplay. eg- i bought doodle devil a while back, i downloaded it again recently, only to find that you can barely play it with all the DLC thats forced upon you… I bought it and it makes me wanna torrent it.

After seeing the graph, I just have to help you. Consider my $8 earned due to showing us all the plight of indie gamers without commercial releases.

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FPS is a game genre. All the games have similar rules - you see through the hero’s eyes and there are many games set in different settings and using different ideas. They do not differ only with graphics.

Saw a thread on Reddit. Originally wasn’t aware of your game but after seeing the vids of it I had to buy it. I’m glad to support Startups like you. Keep on with the good work!

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What happens when some Japanese developers called Kairosoft release a PC game in 1997 called Game Dev Story, later in 2010 porting the title to Android & iOS in 2010 to great success.

Then a couple of devs see this success and clone that port bringing it back to PC under the title Game Dev Tycoon (the name itself a mashup of Game Story and the popular PC games ‘xx Tycoon’ and then get an emormous amount of publicity (& increased sales & profit) due to torrenting a version of the game and writing a blog post about the outcome.

Funny bit is when Green Heart Games claim it’s ironic that a player of their torrented version asks if it’s possible to research DRM… I bet Kairosoft think it’s ironic that Green Heart claim that.

The true irony will be when people torrent the premium version of Game Dev Tycoon

Post deleted by devs/mods in 1… 2… 3…

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I saw the demo, and I just had to get this game. I didn’t think that there would be a pirated version since it came out on windows UI. I will admit, that I have(and currently) pirated games before, but the difference between Greenheart games and these mega corporations is that Greenheart actually makes a good game, that you want to support the company with instead of making games only to syphon the money out of your pocket. I completely support buying this game for $7.99. After all this game is worth it. Hopefully Greenheart will continue making games that are that good in the near future.

@cc_star

First we don’t delete posts (unless they are offensive).

Second we didn’t copy GDS we were inspired by it. This was discussed a lot earlier: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1cn8yi/game_dev_tycoon_essentially_an_updated_game_dev/

Third, if you think that just because we have some traffic to our website and some attention we are suddenly super rich then you’re mistaken. The sales since the story went live have increased but the game is far from being profitable.

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I don’t see what’s wrong with improving on an older game. There are some far worse case of plagiarism out there. Totalbuiscuit made a video this week about this topic. Anyway, the games aren’t even on the same platform. The other one might as well not exist.

I’m man enough to admit when I download games, and there’s plenty of reasons for doing so for someone in my situation, but I also always endeavour to support developers as best I can :slight_smile: I’ve been waiting for something like this to hit the PC (and in English, no less) for such a long time and admit that my desire outweighed my conscience/wallet, though because of how much I love this game; I didn’t even play past year 8 anyhow, deciding to wait and buy the full version. The game is awesome and incredibly cheap, so even though I don’t have any form of income right now; I will be buying this as soon as humanly possible - for $8 it’s a goddamned steal.

I do strenuously apologise for acquiring this via other means than you store, and I have nothing but gratitude and appreciation for your hard work. Please look forward to my purchase in the coming weeks - and thank you again. At least this exists, unlike the “pay us for a translation that will never appear, haha, thanks suckers” silliness from AdeptGamer on their Game Dev Story 2 English project.

Is anyone else having problems with the purchasing system? It took my money but no game. The levels of irony keep getting deeper…

edit: FastSpring said it had a generic order and told me to send a request to their support system.

We’re actually not in control over the order process. FastSpring is our payment provider. Maybe you can get in contact with them. I think it’s support@fastspring.com or you should have received some email with payment info…

It sends you an install link by email. I didn’t have any problem.

By the way, I discovered the game and bought it because of the piracy story on the Escapist.

So… I found this post and it’s really hilarious to the point that I’m buying this game just to see what you guys think of next!

As a newbe gamedev I salute you!

Hi,
I read your post with huge interest…im an iPad exclusive producer with an album on iTunes called The Cares of Tomorrow by Refracted Memories…the album came out in January and the label I’m under tells me that sales are slow but moving…I was also notified by my label a couple of weeks ago that the album is available on all good pirate sites and generally in the last 11 wks has been downloaded over 80,000 times worldwide!
The album is only £6:99 to buy but I wouldn’t have minded a pound …or a penny for those 80,000 downloads…so the latest little dittie I composed I put out on soundcloud as a free download…it’s been approx 6 days and it’s been downloaded 7 times!!!..I can’t give the bloody thing away!!
It would seem that most ignorant people will want something for free as long as its got a price tag attached!!..the album has had great reviews from iTunes and the bloody pirates but unless there’s a little support I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep the missus off my back about the money I spend on apps to compose and that the money would be better spent on a pair of socks!
Anyway great article and thread…piracy really does cripple us all in the end…not least an old man and his iPad

Never heard of the game before, but the articel made me buy it without even playing the demo.
(and while I’m at work too :D)

Good luck guys.

Got the email from Paypal, but not from FastSpring. Guess I just got some bad luck…

Is it immoral for me to now pirate the game I paid for but didn’t receive? Heh…

Yes I understand that the point was not to point finger but I prefer not to hide after being caught doing something bad because the things may get worse.

But yeah I had a great time while playing. I reached the piracy moment with different 3 companies :smile: And it was a blast every time. Definitely the game is worth those 8$.

I have two suggestions though. Is it possible to add a simple calendar? It will be good to see the exact amount of time until G3. Also is it possible to make the game to go random? As it is - it follows the actual real time events - poor GameCube sales, PS2 goes better than the Xbox etc. I think it would be interesting if this goes different every time if it follows the actual in game trends. If my company is making killer games for PC for example this should move the % of the PC popularity a bit further.