This War of Mine developer 11 bit studios gives pirates free copies of their game

Developer 11 bit studios released This War of Mine last Friday only to find out that it was almost immediately cracked and uploaded to The Pirate Bay for anyone to download for free. This is of course not a novelty in the world of PC gaming as piracy has been around for many, many years. Most developers are understandably against this practice and have tried to get rid of the problem for a very long time, with little to no success thus far. 11 bit studios on the other hand, is one of the few developers who understands that there are people out there who simply can not afford to buy games but still want to play them, so they resort to piracy. Not only that, but 11 bit studios even has a solution – give pirates free copies of This War of Mine.

“It’s Karol from 11 bit studios, the developers of This War of Mine,” reads a post found in The Pirate Bay comments section. “We are really happy to hear that you like our game. They prove, that spending 2 years on it was worth it. I would like to say thank you to everyone, who decides to buy the game and support us — because of that we’ll be able to develop TWoM further and create even better games in the future. If because of some reasons you can’t buy the game, it’s ok. We know life, and we know, that sometimes it’s just not possible. Here are some codes for the steam copy of the game, so some of you can take a look at it. And if you like the game after spending few hours in, then just spread the word, and you’ll help us a lot.”

11 bit studios put 10 Steam keys for This War of Mine in the comments section, which triggered a very positive response from The Pirate Bay community. Some of the users promised to buy the game if they liked it while others said they will spread the word and tell other people about This War of Mine. In other words, the developer achieved its goal and all it did was to give away a few free copies of the game. This idea would definitely not appeal to most developers but 11 bit studios seems to think that some good might eventually come out of it.