According to a blog post on their own site, Noodlecake has apparently decided to put forth a “pirated” version of their own game that’s already for sale. Considering they mention that, according to the analytics from the blog post, they only were paid for %11 of the copies of Wayward Souls that are being played (that they can track), it is understandable that they would want to make a statement.
As a response to this, what Noodlecake has said to have done is simple. They modified their latest game, called Shooting Stars, and seeded it to various torrents. When a player encounters the third boss in this modified version of Shooting Stars, the “pirate” version deviates from the official one and executes a boss rush, called a “Daft Premium”. All of the bosses in the rush have “an obscene amount of health” (per the blog post), with the final boss in the rush having unlimited health. Once the player’s character (inevitably) dies, the player is then encouraged to purchase the legit, retail copy of Shooting Stars, in order to support the developers.
Noodlecake also went on to say in their post that they feel that this not “…an answer to piracy, or that it will be a big motivator to suddenly stop cracking games, but instead, we are embracing it as a fun marketing tactic“. The retail version of Shooting Stars is on sale for $0.99 for the duration of its first two weeks which began on July 30th, after which time, the regular price will go up to $2.99. Lastly, they mentioned that premium gaming is “going the way of the dodo” for Android.
In light of this, Noodlecake: If you are insistent upon releasing games for free with IAPs, perhaps you could include a single in-app purchase that unlocks the entire game, for those of us still willing to pay upfront for an entire game? It’s not too much to ask….
