Game Dev Tycoon

                     (Sriram,Danely, Alvin, Edwin)
In April 2013, Greenheart Games released Game Dev Tycoon, a single-player game in which the player gets to simulate the evolution of the game development industry by starting their own company in the 1980s. Because of huge hit that the gaming industry has taken due to bootleg games, the creators of Game Dev Tycoon released a bootleg version of their game on torrenting sites to toy a bit with the users who downloaded the pirated game. The game logged how many people pirated the game, as well as made the game inside the game get pirated.
Piracy is a widespread issue in the software industry, especially for the video game sector. Piracy is the process of distributing and acquiring an illegal copy of a piece of intellectual property without having to pay for it. Essentially, piracy is stealing, with the same consequences to the creator of a work as stealing an item from a store. However, people attempt to justify pirating software through many reasons, including saying that they “can’t afford it” or that, since it is software, piracy does not prevent others from acquiring the same software as stealing a physical item. However, piracy has the same harm on the creator of software. They are still not being paid for their hard work, which often will result in them not having enough revenue to stay in business, as seen in the case of Game Dev Tycoon (1). Furthermore, to counter piracy, companies have to create more and more complicated DRM, and impose rules like requiring the user to be online to use their software. This harms users but is seen as necessary to slow down piracy.
            The creators of Game Dev Tycoon added an interesting twist to their game to show pirates how their actions affect game creators. If a player is running a pirated copy of Game Dev Tycoon, the game becomes unwinnable as pirates pirate the game that they create. This has led to hypocritical responses where pirates complain about piracy. But the effect of this was to start a discussion about piracy in the games industry, and show just how it affects game creators. Still, more needs to be done to prevent piracy, as even with knowledge of the harm, many people don’t make the ethical decision to legally purchase software.

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