And thus continued the saga of sadness known as poor Project Zomboid. Over the weekend, developer The Indie Stone removed the game from their website after they discovered that pirates had developed a version that can update itself. This means trouble. Here are some words that they said in a blog post:

“These ‘auto updating’ versions of the game could screw us completely. We have a cloud based distribution model, where the files are copied all over the world and are served to players on request, which means we are charged money for people downloading the game.”



This is serious business. Or a serious lack of business. Up until now, Indie Stone has been willing to look the other way should pirates run away with some booty. But they emphasise that this was only potential sales. It didn’t actually cost them any money. Now, I can imagine they’re feeling a little miffed.

They still don’t know exactly how much it would cost them to allow the pirates to march on, unhindered. But they’ve taken the game down anyway. You can’t blame them really. Considering their luck.

Ah, but The Indie Stone is a brave-faced stone. They’ve released a limited demo in the meantime to attract some attention and mean there’s still something to play while the full version remains offline.