Indie dev provides torrent, asks that you ‘pirate’ game before buying from key reseller

Acid Wizard Studio made common mistakes during development of its first game. The team had a “simple” idea and set out to make a game quickly. The scope got away from them a bit and the final game took much more time than they expected. But the result, Darkwood, was released in July and is selling well on Steam while earning positive reviews from players.

Which means they began to get scam emails from people claiming to be press or YouTubers, asking for Steam keys to “review” the game.

“That key then gets sold through a shady platform,” Acid Wizard Studio explained in an Imgur post. “To be honest, we're fed up with it. This practice makes it impossible for us to do any giveaways or send keys to people who actually don't have the money to play Darkwood.”

The studio responded by releasing an “official” torrent of the game on The Pirate Bay.

“If you don't have the money and want to play the game, we have a safe torrent on the Pirate Bay of the latest version of Darkwood (1.0 hotfix 3), completely DRM-free,” the Studio explained in an Imgur post. “There's no catch, no added pirate hats for characters or anything like that. We have just one request: if you like Darkwood and want us to continue making games, consider buying it in the future, maybe on a sale, through Steam, GOG or Humble Store.”

Well, they actually have two requests. Consider buying it if you like it, and don’t support key reselling sites.

“But please, please, don't buy it through any key reselling site,” the post continues. “By doing that, you're just feeding the cancer that is leeching off this industry.”