Game developer Noodlecake Studios has released a special edition of its game Shooting Stars that aims to annoy users that pirate the game. The company is distributing a version of the game through illegal app download sites that is impossible to complete, The Guardian reports.
About 11% of the users that are playing the game have a paid version of the Android app that sells at $2.99. However the majority of the users haven't paid for it but instead illegally downloaded the paid version of the game, according to Noodlecake Studios.
To counter that large piracy rate the company has released a version of Shooting Stars where the boss characters are impossible to kill. Once the player dies the game shows a notification encouraging to buy a legal version of the game.
The company knows that it will never win from the pirates, "we don't think this is 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. And hey, if one or two players decide to throw us a couple bucks in the process, then we call that a win."
