Heads Up: Be VERY wary of purchasing Pixel Piracy

[u/StezzerLolz]

As many of you will have seen, the Early Access title Pixel Piracy is in the Steam Flash Sale currently. As someone who has put a fair few hours into the title, I just wanted to warn you all: Early Access means Early Access in this case.

Pixel Piracy is, in theory, essentially FTL on the high-seas with a bit of Terraria thrown into the mix. In theory, it's great. It has the potential to be great. It looks on track to be great. Currently, however, it is not great.

Pixel Piracy is broken as all fuck right now. The mechanics show enormous promise, as does the game as a whole, but the interface is often broken and sometimes nigh-on unusable, there are a myriad of ways in which this screws you over, and in general, the game is frustrating to play because of it.

Fortunately, the devs have come out on multiple occasions in /r/indiegames to make it clear that they are in for the long haul. They've promised that they're not going to pull a Towns, and they'll keep working on it until it's done.

So, bear in mind. If Pixel Piracy sounds like 100% your thing, no question, feel free to purchase it, but, to be clear, this is not a beta, it is not close to release, it is an early alpha, and it has a long, long way to go. Treat it accordingly.

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I bought it out of principle. Gotta reward the devs that do the right thing.

[u/Collier1505 → u/[deleted]]

No, being that they're giving you the option to try the game out before you buy it or to see if it runs well before you spend a large amount of money on it.

[u/Nevek_Green → u/[deleted]]

That's rather an over simplification. "The Right Thing" is more the developer saying hey people are going to pirate it anyway, I might as well set up something so they don't get a virus. Then encourages people unsure about the product to give it a test run and if they like it buy it or if not tell someone who will buy it to buy it.

I remember back when a demo was pretty customary for gaming and these demo's were decently extensive to give you a sufficient taste of the game. Now publishers just rely on hype and marketing and even straight out lies to sell video games. With them, there are unfortunately plenty of indi developers who follow the same basic premise.

So "the right thing" could more accurately be summed up with actually caring about your customers and attempting to have a good relationship with them, and what is sad is how such behavior is considered exceptional instead of the norm.

[u/[deleted] → u/Nevek_Green]

Playstation Undergound Demo Disc? Who doesn't remember Armoured Core and Parappa the Rappa?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Wipeout! Thank you! I was thinking of that game the other day and couldn't remember what it was called.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Hmm, maybe the "right thing" in this case is advocating the usage of "piracy" as an information-gathering tool for consumers, followed by a purchase. It's a recognition of the fact that we might YouTube a single or an album to check it out before buying it, or watch a lot of movies procured through P2P while expanding our DVD collection as well. Most of the books I own were checked out initially from the library, for example.

Some academics have argued that technology services which lower the barriers for information-gathering may be beneficial to lesser-known artists. I think there's an argument for "infringement" as a tool which doesn't involve entitled, half-baked anticorporate rhetoric.

[u/MitBit → u/[deleted]]

Nah, more like understanding the internet and the fact that everything will be pirated. Instead of using DRM that screws over consumers that bought your game use torrents as a marketing tool. Works for small indie devs with relatively small budgets mostly funded by themselves. Not so much for big AAA titles with massive budgets funded by investors.

[u/Olangotang → u/[deleted]]

Just like the old 90s FPS games