Piracy turns indie game into an overnight success

An eye-opening retrospective on Anodyne’s Pirate Bay promotion

Promoting your indie game on a torrent site may not be a surefire way to success, but it certainly worked for developer Sean Hogan, who promoted action-RPG Anodyne on The Pirate Bay last week. As a result, his game has found a new and wider audience, complemented with video coverage, reviews, and news posts on many major game blogs, including Dtoid.

“The promo bay far exceeded what our sales cycle would have been if we just went on as normal — sales were dying down around the start of the promo,” Hogan wrote in a post-mortem.

For 72 hours, the game’s previously unauthorized torrent was promoted to the front page of Pirate Bay along with a link to purchase the game at a discounted $1 minimum. Anodyne pulled in more sales, by a large measure, during the promotion than it had during the previous ten days, culminating in $12,000 split between Hogan and his partner, Jon Kittaka.

“I think everything is much better off now — revenue, people playing, fans, etc, than we were before the promo,” Hogan wrote. “I definitely encourage trying something similar with The Promo Bay if you’re able to.”

Anodyne Pirate Bay Promo Post-mortem [Anodyne Devblog]