Indie devs fight piracy with Daft Punk

Kotaku reports that Noodlecake Studios found a new way to fight pirates, who illegally downloaded their recently released mobile game Shooting Stars!. Developers created a Daft Punk-ish character that couldn’t be killed.

Shooting Stars! costs $2.99 but if you don’t want to bother paying, you can always try a pirated copy. If you lack the decency and basic moral principles, developers will greet you with during the third section of the game. They have put a special indestructible boss character called Premium Funk (clear Daft Punk allusion). Premium Funk cannot be beaten! But before pirates even face this character they would have to fight a huge wave of different bosses with a lot of health.

After the pirates have been killed they will be greeted with a simple message, saying that stealing is actually not a very good thing to do. Instead they should go to the store a buy a legitimate copy of the game.

Noodlecake Studios has been struggling for a while now because of piracy. 89% installs of their previous game Wayward Souls were performed by pirates. But developers believe there’s actually more than that. To stop this from happening again they decided to implement this funny method of stopping pirates.

This is not the first time developers decide to fight piracy with gameplay elements. Serios Sam 3 had similar way of treating pirates: a giant scorpion killed the players, who did not buy the game. It’s a great way to stop the pirates and get additional coverage in the social media.

Source: kotaku.com (noodlecake.com)