Software piracy has been something that developers have been combatting for years. Whether it is including invincible characters like the pink scorpion found in Serious Sam 3, freezing and deleting on reset like with Earthbound, or posting a tweet proclaiming your crime such as with Tweetbot game developers have their ways to try and punish those who take the easy (read: free) way out.
However, if you do decide to pirate software, maybe you shouldn’t mention anything odd that may occur in your pirated copy on social media sites.
Apparently, Dan Hibiki didn’t get this memo before he went to Twitter and asked the game developers what his error message “What is the square root of a fish? Now I’m sad” that popped up at the end of Skullgirls meant.
//@Skullgirls So I got this message after beating story with both Para and Cere and I have no idea what it means… pic.twitter.com/Nv5bH1vqkV
— Dan Hibiki (@SaikyoChamp) July 8, 2014
Without missing a beat, Skullgirls developers responded with
@SaikyoChamp Oh that? It means you should probably buy the game instead of pirate it. o:)
— Skullgirls (@Skullgirls) July 8, 2014
Hibiki quickly backtracked claiming that he had already bought the game after doing a “try-before-you-buy thing” for the PS3 and intended to purchase it for the PC but couldn’t because “GAMESTOP DOESN’T SELL IT DIRECTLY ONLINE AND I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE MY HOUSE!!!” but not before receiving an array of angry responses and retweets (to the point where Hibiki asked how to make it stop).
The good news that came out of all of this, though, is probably how it was handled by Skullgirls developers:
@SaikyoChamp It’s all good, man. Well… I mean, it isn’t really, but I get it. Just try to do the right thing eventually.
— Skullgirls (@Skullgirls) July 8, 2014
It reassuring that they can come out on top without degrading their image in the process.
We all know that software piracy is a thing, but perhaps other pirates can take notes on how not to handle a situation like Hibiki’s.
