Not even joking, there have been quite a few examples of indies putting their own game up as a torrent on Pirate Bay, and they then see their sales skyrocket, because their game was so good that people who would have otherwise never known about that game decided to financially support that developer.
Games spread back in the day from kids in schools copying them, or poor countries, etc.
@PhenomX6 @beardalaxy @ryo
>Anyone who grew up around school kids and kids on the library PCs
Except that can't happen anymore because any school network has Active Directory (or equivalent) which heavily restricts computer usage by having all accounts on a server. I was in 8th grade when our district did this and before that people would bring flash drives with flash games, ROMs, or whatever. I think I even brought games I made using batch files for friends to play.
After they installed active directory, everything you did was tracked, and the only things you could really do was use Microsoft Office or browse whatever sites that weren't blocked.
It's probably even worse now, because schools prefer even more locked down devices like Chromebooks or iPads for students.
@PhenomX6 @beardalaxy @ryo
Really all that did was restrict game choice slightly. As long as it doesn't take admin privileges to get the game set up? Your game will probably spread like wildfire still.
@beardalaxy @ryo
Of course, but all locking down Chromebooks did was make kids hate them.
It's what's ironic, boomers at tech companies think putting their shit in the classroom makes them lifelong customers when they'll say "this Dell sucked we had it in school".