TLDR; The devs released the ‘cracked’ version themselves on various file sharing sites. Their crack had an extra event though; after a while of playing, your studio would inevitably go bankrupt due to video game piracy, forcing a loss. This only occurs in the cracked version as well, so players complaining about it automatically outed themselves as pirates.
Game development is messy. You can do everything right and still end up with a game that is less fun than the one that it’s inspired by. It’s still solid though and the more grounded and realistic spin is not a terrible idea.
One of my favourites is Game Dev Tycoon.
TLDR; The devs released the ‘cracked’ version themselves on various file sharing sites. Their crack had an extra event though; after a while of playing, your studio would inevitably go bankrupt due to video game piracy, forcing a loss. This only occurs in the cracked version as well, so players complaining about it automatically outed themselves as pirates.
Kind of an ironic measure from people who ripped essentially their entire gameplay loop off of earlier games like Game Dev Story.
Perhaps, but that’s how humanity works. We always copy and slightly iterate on things others have created. It’s one of our biggest strengths.
Ideally, we actually improve them before whining that someone else might be using a copy of the thing we copied, though.
Game development is messy. You can do everything right and still end up with a game that is less fun than the one that it’s inspired by. It’s still solid though and the more grounded and realistic spin is not a terrible idea.