14 DAY TRIAL // The developer of The Witness, a single player puzzle game that was released on multiple platforms, said that the rampant piracy is becoming a real problem.
The Witness has been a great success for the Thekla studio, and it has been praised for its gameplay and overall presentation. In fact, it turns out that this is also why it's one of the pirated games out there right now.
The developers of The Witness chose not to implement any DRM solution for the PC platform, and it got pirated, quite a lot. In fact, one of the developers, Jonathan Blow, said on Twitter that while it's good that more people are playing it, this problem could affect the future of any kind of sequels for the PC platform.
Pirating The Witness on the PC is bad for developers
The guys from Thekla are not the only ones who think this is a problem, and many other studios have been confronted with the same issue. Others have the situation and turned into an advantage. The best example is CD Projekt RED and The Witcher series, which had great success and didn't employ any kind of DRM protection. In fact, none of the games on GOG.com come with DRM and this one of their features.
“It seems The Witness is the #1 game on a certain popular torrent site. Unfortunately, this will not help us afford to make another game! :( I'm glad that a lot more people will be experiencing the game! But I also want to be able to make another comparable game next! Just saying,” developer wrote on Twitter.
These are the same people who word on Braid, and they said that The Witness sold more in a week than Braid sold in an entire year. That really puts things in perspective, since both of them can be considered indie titles.