they should torrenting free 2 play games, that will crush em all

I've always liked the anti-piracy idea of releasing buggy or unplayable versions of the game onto torrent sites. Seems like it would be the best way to dissuade people from pirating. Like, have a version of the game that simply cuts out halfway through. Nobody would ever know if they were downloading a "good" version, and a lot of people would simply not bother to go throug hthe hassle.

It actually ends up leading to shitty word of mouth, which is why you don't see it done more often.

Publishers do sabotage games from time to time for release over torrent. Personally, I don't like the idea because of the shitty word of mouth, but also sometimes the additional checks end up harming people who bought a legit copy due to a bug in the implementation.

I do have a question about this practice.

Am I right in assuming that it's actually legal to download "official" pirate versions?

Happens even if they don't do it on purpose, sadly. I remember reading about it from the Relic QA manager's blog over Sin Episodes: Emergence. Bugs exclusive to the pirated version garnered significant negative attention.

And I think Batman: Arkham Asylum had a problem with it, too. But managed to overcome the bad press element.

Not really. It's the entire basis for the honeypot sting. It's kind of case-by-case ultimately. There's a good defense in this instance, because being so public about it seems like implicit permission.

well i knew nothing about the game til this thread, played the flash game and laughed that much i bought the game on their site, looking forward to the free second game for having done so!

It's been tried from time to time, the idea certainly isn't new. It usually ends up backfiring on the developers though. Likewise, DRM checks that silently crash the game tend to backfire on the devs, I recall some dev shop complaining about their reviews because of an improperly cracked copy crashing a lot.

Overall, you're unlikely to convert anyone this way and you just might piss off someone who's clever enough to figure out how to hurt you (rightly or wrongly), there's just no real good reason for it.

Agreed. Games will always get pirated so, as a developer, you might as well have a sense of humor about it and attempt to market to the pirates.

On the bright side, they get an unfixed, unpolished version.

I think uploading a copy of your game yourself puts downloading it in legal gray waters, so I'm not sure they could successfully prosecute. Putting a virus in the torrent could easily lead to criminal charges against them.