It is better to embrace inevitable piracy than to fight it, Anodyne co-designer Sean Hogan stated on Reddit under his online handle seagaia.
This statement follows the appearance of the developer's 2D title Anodyne on file sharing website The Pirate Bay. Rather than fighting back, Hogan began to share download codes for the game, explaining through Reddit:
"Yeah, piracy is inevitable so it's better to embrace it — plus, it gives lots of people who couldn't normally afford the game the opportunity to play it.
"I think when you're a small group of developers (only my friend Jon [Kittaka] and I made Anodyne), it's better to have lots of people able to experience your game. We hope enough people will like it and the word will get out, eventually allowing us to get onto Steam, which then lets more people see and play Anodyne!"
In addition to sharing download codes for the game, Hogan also asked Pirate Bay users to tweet him their feedback. Since posting on Reddit it was revealed Anodyne has been removed from the file sharing website; however, Hogan states he knew nothing of its removal.
"Uploading it and then taking it down would have been genius, but I am not that smart," he said on Twitter.
Hogan isn't the only developer to adopt this attitude toward file sharing. Recently Hotline Miami developer Jonatan Soderstrom took on a similar approach to piracy, offering up a patched version of the title for users to download online.