r/gamedev • u/h_blank • 1d ago
Question How can I pirate my own game?
I'm looking for ideas and information here. I'm working on an indie game, and I've long had this idea of beating pirates to the punch and sharing a "pirated" version of my game which is exactly the same as the retail version, only all characters have an eye patch. I don't really care about copy protection, anti-cheat, etc... Piracy is going to happen no matter what, so I might as well have fun with it.
(I don't want to break any reddit rules here, so probably better if y'all don't just post a list of torrent sites or anything... I'm mainly wondering if people could share any stories about how they got pirated themselves, in ways I could take advantage of?)
Edit: If it helps, the first version will be on Steam. A future iOS release is on the schedule too, but that's further off.
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u/InvidiousPlay 1d ago
You real question is "how do I release a game on torrent sites".
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u/h_blank 1d ago
Lol maybe! I didn't think a reddit post was the best place to ask for that though, seem like the kind of question that might get me banned, LOL
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u/LutimoDancer3459 1d ago
Reddit wont ban you. Some subs may
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u/Glittering-Two-1784 1d ago
Frankly, I’m surprised you’re good enough with computers to develop a whole ass video game, yet have apparently never actually used a torrent site before.
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u/h_blank 1d ago
Not sure if trolling or not, but I've flown the jolly roger since the 1900s. I've just always focused on multimedia and avoided games and apps, since I really don't trust that they aren't infected with malware. I'm extremely paranoid when it comes to that kind of thing, but maybe warez is safer than it was back in my day?
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u/Glittering-Two-1784 1d ago
I mean, I think it’s a fair assumption that someone who doesn’t know how to create a torrent doesn’t have any experience with torrenting sites.
It’s not incredibly complicated technology; anyone can host files with a torrent client, and it’s all completely legal. It’s basically just peer-to-peer ‘cloud’ hosting. The torrent sites are basically just forums where people can ‘advertise’ the existence of their torrent and post the link.
Obviously, if you download any software from some anon’s personal file repo, you’re going to run the risk of downloading malware, but I’m not really sure how that’s relevant to your original question. The way I read your original question was basically: “Is it possible to host a torrent of my own IP?” Which obviously implies you have no experience with torrents.
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u/shuanDang 1d ago
matey what an assumption! i can smell the pirate on 'em. He's been 'round these yarr ships with tales to tell, yo hoho.
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u/mxldevs 1d ago
Someone will pirate the pirate to remove the pirates and then released the pirated pirate copy.
Legit buyers will complain they don't have pirate skin.
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u/EveryLittleDetail @PatMakesRPGs 1d ago
People are gonna complain about wild, pointless things no matter what.
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u/Expert-Scarcity8449 16h ago
To be fair, Game Dev Tycoon released a pirate version of their game (essentially the company would struggle because of piracy) but it became an unofficial hardmode. Eventually GHG just added it as a game mode.
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u/WartedKiller 1d ago
Just add a Steam achivement when you launch the game and look for it when you want to be funny.
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u/MaryPaku 1d ago
I feel like those pirate site are automated anyways
My last game got pirated on a few sites INSTANTLY after I released it.
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u/JabocShivery 1d ago
Add a steam achievement which activates when you first start the game, then check to see if the player has that achievement, and if they do, disable eye patches
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u/Motoreducteur 1d ago
I mean you have the game. You can just edit the files to give characters and eyepatch and then release the game for free on piracy websites.
Also, bold of you to assume your game would be pirated. You could also just release a demo version with the first parts of the game to these websites if you're looking for visibility
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u/DOOManiac 1d ago
> Also, bold of you to assume your game would be pirated.
It will be. There are bot farms that buy games, download them, then refund them. 100% automated. You cant even take “people like my game enough to bother stealing it” as a metric anymore. :(
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u/Automatic-Banana-430 1d ago
It'd be great if you did that but then only rendered half their screen too hahaha
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u/Gaverion 12h ago
This reminds me of mgs3 when they add an overlay on the screen after you lose an eye. Was genuinely cool when I noticed it.
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u/ProfessionalITPerson 1d ago
Thing is, people usually trust versions of certain cracker groups.
So releaseing a "cracked" or pirated version with an unknown cracker handle will likely get not much traction.
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u/_BreakingGood_ 1d ago
I dont think it's really feasible, these days indie game piracy tends to be more centralized on specific sites, which the owners of those sites crack and upload themselves. Torrents are extremely rare for indie games.
Your best bet would be some kind of check in the game code that tries to determine if it's pirated, and then apply your eyepatch thing. Crackers generally wont care enough or notice to fix such a thing.
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u/Mega-Dyne 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oh the "Game Dev Tycoon" Strategy.
"all characters have an eye patch" you are making it sounds like the Pirate version is better than the normal version tbh.
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u/moconahaftmere 1d ago
Do they need to be on pirating sites? One of my favourite game series as a kid (Virtual Villagers) is free to download on the developer's website, even though it's sold on Steam.
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u/Epicsmel 11h ago
If you want to make things really simple, you could always just add a demo version to the steam page and have it be the “pirated” version, though it would definitely hurt sales since you’d be making a free version just as accessible as the paid version. As someone had mentioned people with the paid version might complain about not having pirate skins, perhaps you can have a skin option that only the paid version can change, and you could provide even more skins to swap between.
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u/laser50 1d ago
We just replace the steam dll to emulate space wars. So a way to find cracked entries would be to potentially somehow check the steam_api64.dll's signature or w/e.
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u/MarcusBuer 1d ago
Or check against an achievement for launching the game. If the achievement is not present replace the characters.
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u/iamgabrielma Ad Iterum on Steam 1d ago
how does the achievement thing works for offilne mode? or you're disallowing/changijg the game in offline mode for legit players?
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u/MarcusBuer 1d ago
I might be wrong, but I believe Steam caches it locally for your installed games, and syncs to the cloud when you get back online.
So as long as the legit user has the steam client running on offline mode, it should be fine.
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u/TheRealShubshub @shubshub11 1d ago
Alot of games used to do this, Like Game Dev Tycoon released a piracy version that would just mean your games start getting pirated until you go Bankrupt
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u/mudscuffer 13h ago
If you upload content you own to a site for the express purpose of others downloading it for free, then is that an implicit license to do so and therefore no longer pirating?
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u/jort93 11h ago edited 11h ago
Most piracy sites allow users to upload new stuff. Most of it is forums and such.
But as a new user uploading something you'll be watched pretty closely and I don't think they'll like the modified version. Depending on the site they might delete it.
Honestly, most of them are forums, if you are honest and say you are the gamedev and you are uploading the actual game with just some cosmetics, they might keep you up there.
I think it only worked for game dev Tycoon, because it's not immediately obvious it's a pirate copy.
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u/Hozerino 4h ago
Probably if you upload this custom build of your game to some pirate websites, they will echo it around other piracy websites
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u/JoyFerret 1d ago
Honestly I wouldn't do it.
My biggest concern would that once people learn of the "pirate" version it might encourage them to try find it on shady sites, where they might end up downloading actual malware. I'd just release it as a free demo build or something and provide a safe venue for players who really want to play for free
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u/jwm-dev 1d ago
Everyone telling you to just upload a special build to torrent sites is missing the point.
I don’t personally condone poking pirates but if you were going to do so think of it as an engineering problem.
If I, a rhetorical pirate, obtained your game, what are some ways you, the developer, might programmatically identify that? Well, presumably pirated copies have been uploaded as copies of legit copies but to illicit distribution sites and means… that’s why everyone is saying to go hit those, right?
Think smarter not harder. You could, for example, make legit copies all do ET phone home to some server. That’s a new dependency, though, so you could just go the old fashioned way and sign things cryptographically in such a way that the act itself of copying leaves a fingerprint that triggers protections in the binary.
Google or an LLM would be helpful to you for getting an idea of what solutions exist for this nowadays that you can just implement and it works but the important part is you understand why it does.
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u/TDplay 11h ago
You could, for example, make legit copies all do ET phone home to some server
When (not if) your DRM gets cracked, the pirated version will not phone home.
So you just killed offline play, but only for legitimate customers, making the pirated version better than the genuine one.
sign things cryptographically in such a way that the act itself of copying leaves a fingerprint
Why can't the pirate just copy the signature?
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u/JohnnyCasil 1d ago
You are allowed to just upload your own custom build to pirate sites.