Berserk Boy is not a game that you probably heard of. With hundreds of indie game developers releasing exceptional titles on a regular basis now, it would not be surprising to learn that a lot of them are getting lost in the shuffle. This is a Mega Man style platformer from the developer who also made Gravity Circuit. After five years in development, Berserk Boy released this March, on Steam and the Nintendo Switch. It didn’t quite become the next sleeper indie hit, but it did earn respectable MetaCritic scores of 83 on PC and 81 on Steam.
And earlier today, five months after that launch, Berserk Boy’s developer shared a link to pirate its Nintendo Switch ROM. But the developer does not want people to start pirating it now. Instead, they quote tweeted the link with this message:
“can you just buy my game instead”
A few hours later, they linked to the game’s Steam page, now with this message:
“wow – thank you, i appreciate the signal boosting on this. i’m aware pirating is inevitable, but if you do want to get the game. it is on steam!”
As you may imagine, they are getting responses from people who want to express their support, and people saying they intend to pirate the game. But that’s the kind of culture that seems to have grown around video games now.
Now, we know that a single news article won’t change anyone’s mind about pirating games or not. But there is something particularly insidious about pirating a game made by a single developer, that hasn’t even been out for a full year, and clearly hasn’t had enough time to make its money back.
There’s a popular trope going around that “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.” That seems to be a response to the genuinely abhorrent practice of companies taking away ownership of digital products, even after they paid for them with their own money. We saw that in video games too, when Ubisoft delisted The Crew from online stores, going so far as to delist the game from their consumer’s accounts.
But clearly there is no one single guiding principle in this situation that is the one size fits all final solution. Even if it is true that many games that have been pirated through the years are no longer making money for the people who made them, that doesn’t mean you are guiltless from pirating any game that has been released at any time.
It simply isn’t possible to argue that spreading that ROM around was some kind of attempt at video game preservation. Berserk Boy’s developer isn’t legally hampered from making a physical release of their games. It’s simply reality that not every developer can make a physical release of their title. At the same time, the existence of digital games has allowed thousands of developers to enter the industry, or even to share their games for free.
But if a developer wants to make their games free, that’s up to them. Berserk Boy’s developer is making it clear that they need financial support from the game’s fans. Not everyone is in a position to buy games, but that is not a reasonable excuse to take income away from devs making games like this one.
As you can imagine, some gamers have pointed this link at the direction of people at Nintendo, but we don’t need to wait for them to take action. You can support Berserk Boy now by buying the game from the links we shared above. You can also check out its official trailer below.
