After hearing from a player who refunded because they didn't have the money, the 'Darkwood' developers got creative.
This is as far as I and many other people would go to play a game they can’t find or buy is to torrent it. If you are able to get money to buy games do so in support of it or have a friend to buy it and you can share it which allowed me to get around games I didn’t have a interest to buy but willing to play.
Its really nice they did that. The music industry has already proven that people willing to pay for music they like that is free are the minority though. I hope the dev makes enough money off of their work. Maybe the positive attention they get through sites such as this will generator enough publicity for their finances to work out.
Most of the PC games I played as a kid were either Shareware or pirate copies. As a teen, I tried every demo disc I could get my hands on. Nowadays there are so many options to have a massive collection of games for free or little money.
PSN/Xbox subscribers basically get 1 game a week for less than the price of a coffee. Humble Bundle offers a pay what you want system for bundles, although you gotta pay more than the average to get into the better tiers. Steam, Origin, GOG, Uplay, and others all offer 100% discounts on games if you’re patient and constantly looking out for it.
Digital sales on all the storefronts have pretty awesome deals. Consoles still have a second hand market for discs on Ebay and your local EB Games/Gamestop.
I love the idea of the Xbox Game Pass and the EA Vault. Game Pass has a two week free trial and offers over 100 games.
All this means that people who put out new games and ask for money have a massive challenge convincing potential consumers that a single game is worth more than what we normally spend to get access to these vast catalogues. Indie devs can’t spend multiples of the development budget on advertising but with a torrent, maybe they can get their name out there and grow a cult following so their next game could be a breakout success.
It’s a broad subject that has roots on more than people who doesn’t want to pay but it’s a marketing move that they did right there and I think it should be acknowledged that in a way they already got their money worth in the potential lost revenue from piracy as they get additional exposure.
So, all in all, they’re already a fringe case that has no bearings on the industry because they did a marketing gamble that worked and got ““free”” exposure out of it.
Most of the pirated games dies in darkness, the opposite of Darkwood, and not every game can just follow the same path as they did because they’re not certain that the visibility is going to be the same. It’s a one-off, really. Definitely not an example to follow.
This is really clever, especially for survival horror. Some people avoid spending money on horror because they’re not sure they can take the scares, so this will encourage them, AND horror games are YouTube’s darling genre. If some of those gamers give this game a spin, it might bump word of mouth enough to turn a profit.
Also this is really nice. 
Horror unnerves me, but I like nice things/people. Hope in humanity slightly restored. I’ll be sure to tell my spookier friends!
