Machinarium studio offers pirates amnesty

The critically acclaimed game developer studio Amanita, based in the Czech Republic, explores a new way to combat piracy: offering them amnesty. The studio’s latest title, Machinarium, has fallen victim to widespread piracy. It is estimated that for this title, pirated distribution outnumbers legal sales by about 9 to 1.

In a bid to reverse this trend, Amanita offers pirates a change at redemption. Amnesty, they call it. For a limited number of days, you can buy the game that normally sells for 20 dollar with a 75% discount. The offer stands until 12 August. While the offer stands for all, it is targeted especially at pirates.

On their blog, the developers say: “We released the game DRM free which means it doesn’t include any anti-piracy protection, therefore the game doesn’t bother players with any serial codes or online authentication, but it’s also very easy to copy it.

“Our estimate from the feedback is that only 5-15% of Machinarium players actually paid for the game. If you decide to buy the game, you can be sure you’ll support directly the developers, not any big publisher or distributor”.

This last sentence ought to ring well with pirates, as one of the most used pro-sharing argument is that all the income from sales ends up with a faceless corporation rather than with the artists and developers.