Jonatan Soderstrom found himself on many people's radar earlier this week, thanks to the release of his latest and greatest, Miami Hotline. Though anyone that's been in the know is well aware of his output from the past few years now; fans of Clean Asia know what I'm talking about.
But in addition to his acumen as a skilled game maker, now people are abuzz over his recent act of kindness. He's determined to help people play his game if they're having technical difficulties. Even if they didn't pay a single red cent and instead stole a copy.
PC Gamer reports how a thread popped up on The Pirate Bay recently, filled with people complaining about various technical issues. In response, Soderstrom (posting as Cactus69, his pseudonym for much of his game making career), explained:
Hey there!
I'm Jonatan Soderstrom, me and my friend Dennis Wedin made this game. We're working on an update that hopefully will take care of any/all bugs, and we'll try to do some extra polish in the next few days. Would be great if you could update the torrent when the patch is out! It'd be great if people get to play it without any bugs popping up.
Hope everyone will enjoy the game!
For the "Error defining an external function." problem, try restarting your system and play again, it can pop up when your computer has been running for a while. We'll try to figure out if there's more to it than that.
The act of goodwill is not only heartfelt, but a moneymaker of sorts as well. Many who have heard the story have gone ahead and paid for a copy, simply as a way to support a game maker who has such a sympathetic stance toward those who, to a large degree, should perhaps deserve none whatsoever.
It's also yet another example of an indie game maker taking advantage of file sharing ecosystems. It wasn't too long ago in which the creator of McPixel, Mikolaj "Sos" Kaminski, released his game onto Pirate Bay for free of charge, for a limited time.
The belief was that enough people would play the game to create positive word of mouth. Enough so that, when the promotion was pulled, those curious would end up paying for the game. Which is exactly what happened.
As noted recently, Miami Hotline is a very excellent game, well worth the price of admission, which is a paltry $10.
