Whatever the case, I'm p. sure this PR stunt has worked in his favour. I normally wouldn't even give a game like McPixel the time of day, but the controversy caught my attention, and reading up on it does reveal it to be a neat little game.
Btw just got a reply from him saying there won't be a GOG release, though he won't disclose the details. Too bad :(

this man understands.

“I was actually visiting Pirate Bay from time-to-time looking for a McPixel torrent,” Sosowski explained to RPS. “If people pirate games, it means they want to play it regardless of anything. Pirate Bay is one of the most visited sites in the Internet, and just having a torrent there is promotion for the game. I left a comment there, because I wanted people to know that I make games for a living, and that they are directly supporting me with each purchase.”

This guy knows more about marketing than the whole top floor in the Ubisoft headquarters.

I do scream at those people. Because theft the "crime worthy aspect of thievery" is not the "getting something for free" but the "taking it away from others". "Getting something for free" is not a crime. You are liable in a civil court, of course, but it is not a crime.

Take a look at the examples you provided, "theft" always implies something was taken away. That does not happen with piracy.

There has been, in lack of other options, a strong marketing campaign of the music industry in recent years to criminalize piracy. And the "piracy=theft" rhetoric just turns people into some corporate stooges babbling after the predefined spiel of the industry. This is really, really counter-productive in many, many ways.

[url=http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/elephant ]Words have power. [/url]. Therefore I do take offence in people stupidly babbling after what the industry told them.

Edit: Yay, double post....

When you buy a finished game, you are also not contributing to its creation. You are contributing to the devs paying their bills and making more (hopefully) awesome games, or to the publisher buying hookers and blow and screwing over the devs, or whatever. That may be moral or immoral, legal or illegal, good or bad in the long run, personally satisfying or not. (I once sent a dev a captioned image, and $500. Best prank ever.) But even if e.g. the creator took out a loan to commission the assets and is currently in dire financial straits, when you buy a finished game, you are not contributing to its creation, because it has already been made.

But teens contributed to those games' promotion and opened doors for sequels.

I'm pretty sure that 90's organizations like Hybrid were the developers themselves pulling a publicity stunt.

Taboo sells, just like free and easy dibs on a full game is hard to pass up thus making new releases much more interesting than the hundreds of competing demos that kids were overlooking.

It's a way to distribute free copies of your game to get word of mouth around without distributing free copies to entirely everyone.

*Sigh* This is one of those cases again.

Yes, I agree you can't say all piracy is theft, because there are some applications that can be for the good, and in an ideal world all information can be free and so on. And sometimes the publisher or designer goes just too far with the DRM and whatnot , I know. *cough*ubiso-*cough* Oh, I had to agree to this... I wonder why, even though I am somehow against it?

This thing is versed so that no-one in their right mind can criticize it right away, while it still sends a pro-piracy message "masked" behind it. But think about it for a minute:

He gives free things, victimizes himself on purpose and then says he is okay with it. "You have gained Karma!" to put it into internet-slang. The result is that some people flock to him giving him "free" money in return, because he is being so admirable in his valiant deeds. So he gets paid. Not as much as he could have, but gets anyway. If it stopped here, I'd call it excellent marketing. But it doesn't. He adds throttle by implying that the DRM results and high prices that the big companies are using to combat the same problem are not okay, and that piracy shouldn't be deemed as theft.

Think about it this way: he finds a way to profit from the war between publishers/designers and pirates (just like the big companies have been trying on a different scale), so he claims you should legitimize piracy. Naturally, because he is profiting from it. He is not a victim of piracy who is just such a good guy he holds no grudges; he is using the niche market in there to gain (small, granted) profit from the situation. This still is good marketing, and he is not evil any more than the pirates and publishers but don't go making him a saint on my watch either.

To sum it up: Good for him, I like the way he handles this. But I don't think he can say anything about piracy being a crime or not based on that experience.

Things are not black and white, as most sides to any given conflict would want you believe. An ideal put to practice can and will almost invariably be twisted to benefit someone more than others. Use consideration.

Exactly my thoughts. Who freaking cares if it's called theft or not? What kind of sick morality is that? "It's no theft so it's ok" ? It would be the stupidest conclusion in the world.

By the way, software piracy is treated equally to regular theft in Polish penal code if you do it for money. (selling pirated software, selling premium accounts on rapidshare for points you earned on hosting pirated software, etc.)

Nice publicity stunt, although I I'm not sure endearing yourself to the people who usually don't buy software as opposed to those who do is the greatest promotional strategy ever.

It doesn't matter if it's theft or not, if it's somehow beneficial or not. People who pirate are getting things they have no right to against the creator's wishes. Call it theft or a slap to the face, it's still wrong.

@ Crowned
I agree, a very good take on the situation

I don't agree with piracy, never will. But I agree with this; If publishers are inadvertently, or intentionally, being restrictive with the way a consumer can purchase a game (only using paypal, not selling to certain regions, OTT drm etc.) they are creating their own problems. People with an interest in retail should always make it as easy and convenient as possible for people to make purchases. Common sense.

Aside from that there are some interesting points to the article (rock paper shotgun) about providing content to people who are impoverished and/or living in oppressive regimes. That's a different angle, and I wonder if publishers can even sell their product in certain nations? Almost certainly not in many cases I'm sure. If a government is getting in the way, you can't blame people for pirating, they don't even represent a proportion of your market in such circumstances. As for the whole "people can't afford games", I just don't buy it. If you have internet access and a computer, you can probably afford a game. That may be incredibly harsh, but I guess I base that opinion on my having grown up without much access to games due to financial constraints. I never resorted to piracy, so I find it hard to relate to why others do.

I guess there is regional pricing and exchange rates to consider, not really sure where the blame lies on that.

By the way, I downloaded his game.

It fucking sucks.

Any chance of explaining why you think it sucks?

Ir's loud, it looks like crap (no, it's not "retro style", it looks like crap)

I dropped playing this abomination after first minute and a half, it's a freaking world record I'd say.

Music - my ears are bleeding
Humour - toiletish
Riddles? You click on something than you click on something else.

I really can't say much more. I was almost blown away by first "McPixel" scream from title screen.

I'll try few minutes more but I don't think my feelings will change.

You click here, than you click there, something blows up, no explanation, next scene, you click this, you click that, something blows up, no explanation (Did I even succeed or did I loose? No exaplanation).

This is just wrong...

EDIT:

oh, yeah, I finished the first episode. I saved the day eventually. The gameplay and humour was horrible, though.

It's worse than most of the free flash "joke games" I played on Newgrounds 7 years ago.

The riddles were completely random, unfunny and they didn't require any thinking. You just click on stuff.

You're not saying anything I don't know here, which I thought I made clear. The point was a grammar error has nothing to do with whether piracy is moral or not. I hate when both sides get bogged down in this silly aspect of the debate.

There's a demo on the game's homepage. This game is just a riff on the SNL skit MacGruber. I might have enjoyed it if it weren't for the toilet humor, which I really don't care for. It's just a point-and-click game with 20 seconds to solve the level's puzzle, then it goes to the next one automatically whether you did it right or not. The full game is about 20 minutes long to get 100%, according to people on Twitter. Thirty Flights of Loving was even shorter but I enjoyed that one much more, and it was half the price.