Game developer asks pirates nicely to stop

Independent game developers, ACE Team, creators of a first person shooter called Zeno Clash, are fighting piracy with a new tactic. Rather than going after those who pirate their games, they’ve taken to the torrent sites themselves to attempt to sway the minds of people contemplating downloading pirate copies of their game.

ACE Team is located in Chile and Zeno Clash was nominated in January as a finalist in the Independent Games Festival competition in the “Excellence in Visual Art” category.



ACE Team says it realises that people do sometimes want to try a product before buying it, and that it doe plan to launch a demo version. However, until then, rather than threatening legal action, which typically achieves little in reducing piracy on a wide scale, the company is working to persuade torrenters to buy the game.

Zeno Clash has already appeared on different torrent sites, but rather than getting angry, the developers are appealing to the conscience of those who download the game:

I’m one of the developers of Zeno Clash. I would appreciate you read this if you are about to download this file.

Zeno Clash is an independently funded game by a very small and sacrificed group of people. The only way in which we can continue making games like this (or a sequel) is to have good sales.

I am aware that at this moment there is still no demo of the game, but we are working on one which will be available soon.

We cannot do anything to stop piracy of the game (and honestly don’t intend to do so) but if you are downloading because you wish to try before you buy, I would ask that you purchase the game (and support the independent game development scene) if you enjoy it. We plan on updating Zeno Clash with DLC and continuing support for the game long after it’s release.

Thanks for taking the time to read this… hopefully it will make a difference.

Carlos Bordeu

ACE Team

_{Pictured: Carlos Bordeu}

Rather than an angry outraged response from torrent sharers, the uploader of the torrent came forward and has said he wants to help the developers in selling their product. He has begun spreading the word regarding the game.

ACE Team feels that their method of fighting piracy is better than the music, movie and software industry’s usual approach. In fact, it may well have struck upon a very effective strategy, due to the psychology of gamers. Escapist Magazine wrote in an article titled "10 ways to fight piracy":


So far, comments on torrent sites have been very positive, with the majority of downloaders appreciating how the developer approached them, and claiming that they would be downloading the game to try but had every intent to buy if they enjoyed it.

Currently torrent downloads of the game remain very low.

_{Via Torrentfreak}