This is the right attitude towards piracy. Pirate it first, then pay if you feel it was worth it.
Literally never heard of it but the dev thinks if I get it for free I will want to give him money. It shows a level of confidence in the product that encourages me want to check it out.
It’s well-deserved confidence. The game alone would have been intriguing with just the sheer amount of choice that’s available, but the fact that it’s all excellently voiced is icing on the truly delicious cake. It’s one of those games that probably will only keep your attention for one or two full playthroughs, but those playthroughs will definitely be different for every person. If you want to give it a shot during the Summer Sale, you can finish at least the first part of a playthrough well under the refund time for Steam, in case it’s not your kind of game.
Also if the alternative was “no money, still can’t buy the game” then they are losing no money in the process anyway.
But it doesn’t cost their time and effort. Time and effort has already been spent, and as a result, the media exists. Someone playing a copy of the game has no effect on the developer (except maybe advertising).
I don’t fully disagree with you. I personally don’t pirate things (I can afford to just pay up front, and if I don’t want to support a dev, I just fully don’t play the game, I don’t want to accidentally be lumped into any metrics that might show support), but the game dev themselves said “No skin off our back”.
If I steal your car, you no longer have a car. If I steal your game, you’ve lost absolutely nothing. Code is infinitely reproducible. You’re only out the sale.
This dev made art, and they care more about sharing the art they created with more people, than they do about getting every last transaction paid for.
It’s usually the publisher that has strong opinions about this, because they didn’t make the art nor do they care about people seeing it. they only care about getting the money, but again, if you can’t afford it, they were never going to get your money anyway. It’s technically a victimless crime. No skin off anyone’s back.
The issue is when enough people who CAN afford to pay use the “no skin off their back” logic to not pay, and a good game winds up not being profitable (or profitable enough to the publisher) and a studio suffers as a result.
Demos are almost completely gone, so make your own demos :) but still feel free to actually pirate from ea, Ubisoft, Sony, etc
That’s exactly how I did it. A friend of mine got me interested in the premise, but I just couldn’t afford to buy it. So I pirated it… And the moment I had the spare funds, this was one of the games I pirated that I instantly bought among a few others like Dead Cells and Halls of Torment. The devs of Slay the Princess know they have something good enough to convince folks to buy it even when they have it for free, no strings attached. And they’re right.
Unfortunately most do not have the decency to pay for something after already receiving it.
“I already beat the game, why would I pay for it?” This must be especially common for big AAA games too.
Devs like that really make me want to buy the game, I wasn’t too interested because I’m not a fan of the genre but I will now look into it
It certainly needs to be played, one way or another.
It’s a great game. The devs seem really chill on their discord server. I highly suggest people try this game out even if visual novels aren’t your usual genre of games.
I walked into this game not knowing much, and the simple premise hooked me. Played it and loved the time I spent with it. Absolute gem of a game. Story was good overall, the voice acting was fantastic, and the gameplay loop was short enough to allow me time to play it in short bursts when I had time.
