McPixel has just become the first game promoted on “The Promo Bay,” a periodical event in which torrent site The Pirate Bay promotes independent artists. While historically developers have embraced piracy as a way to appeal to fans, it appears now piracy has embraced a developer.

The deal went down while Sos was heading up an IAmA thread on Reddit. Before this, Sos had left some promo codes in the comment section of the game’s torrent on The Pirate Bay, which had ultimately caught the attention of the site administrators. They then contacted Sos to arrange this promotion.



For the next three days, visitors to The Pirate Bay can click on the pissing protagonist, which links to the game’s homepage that is running a pay-what-you-can deal.

Sos told IndieGames that over 100 units have sold since the promo has started. The average per purchase now is $1.34. While this is much lower than the game’s retail price of $9.99, this figure probably encompasses 100 people who wouldn’t have seen, played, or paid for the game otherwise.

I suppose this makes McPixel a temporary freeware game pick. However, I don’t want to point to the torrent, mostly because it’s worth taking in McPixel on The Pirate Bay home page.