Some gamers who attempted to pirate a new title released over the weekend learned an important lesson in a gloriously ironic way.

Or, as is more likely, they didn't actually learn a damn thing. But we can laugh at them:

On Sunday, new studio Greenheart Games released its first product, a game-development simulator called Game Dev Tycoon. In the SimCity-style game, you build a game developer up from the ground, managing resources and growing it from garage startup to the next Activision.

Trouble is, if you downloaded a pirated version of the game – that Greenheart itself put onto BitTorrent in an attempt to dragnet would-be freeloaders – you would eventually hit a wall that didn't exist in the paid version, as shown above. The game tells you that you can't make any more money as your fictional product is being excessively pirated.

Clever! But what makes this story wonderful is the responses from some players, e.g.:

Back in the 80s and 90s I could easily make a 1m sales with 9-10 game but now it's not possible due to the piracy. It says bla bla our game got pirated stuff like that. Is there some way to avoid that? I mean can I research a DRM or something… So far I am going nowhere. My profit is little to none. … So what I have to do now? There's no point in inventing a new engine because the revolutionary game made out of it will get pirated and I will not be able to cover my expenses.

Oh, you think? Tell me more about the effects of piracy. Maybe Greenheart's experiment will cause a few game swipers to start paying money for things they want.