“How do you deal with a pirate?” That’s easy. First, hang him from the highest point of Her Majesty’s gallows. Then put his broken body on display at the busiest pier of the harbour, so that other scallywags will think …
“How do you deal with a pirate?” That’s easy. First, hang him from the highest point of Her Majesty’s gallows. Then put his broken body on display at the busiest pier of the harbour, so that other scallywags will think twice before they–
Oh, wait. That kind of pirate. The digital kind.
Noodlecake Games is fighting piracy of its games — the recently-released Shooting Stars! in particular — by planting a trap and a message in a contraband version of the shooter that’s found its way onto an unfortunate number of Android devices.
If you play this “rigged” version of Shooting Stars!, you’re thrown against a wave of ferociously tough enemies, which climaxes with a fight against a Daft Punk look-alike. The boss, being a member of Daft Punk, is beyond human limits and is therefore immortal. When you’re inevitably killed, you receive a message humbly requesting you to buy the full version of the game.
“We don’t think this is an answer to piracy, or that it will be a big motivator to suddenly stop cracking games,” Noodlecake wrote on its blog, “but instead, we are embracing it as a fun marketing tactic. And hey, if one or two players decide to throw us a couple bucks in the process, then we call that a win.”
The blog post also states that it priced Shooting Stars! at $2.99 USD because it believes there’s still a market for premium games on the App Store. While I personally found Shooting Stars!’ content to be a bit random, there are certainly worse ways to spend $2.99. Support indie devs, or Daft Punk will eat you in your sleep. Shooting Stars is available on the App Store and Google Play.
