Darkwood developer Acid Wizard Studio spent nearly five years developing its top-down horror game. After only one week on sale, it decided to offer the game up for free on Pirate Bay.

Darkwood was originally envisioned as a tower defense game to be made in a month. Clearly the woods had other plans for Acid Wizard.

Why would it do this after so much hard work? It's not because of the game's quality, as its Steam user rating averages at "very positive" with over a thousand players offering their opinion. Nor is it due to the game failing to hit the studio's sales goals. It's actually been quite the opposite on that front, as Acid Wizard noted that the game's sold well above its expectations, with its first week post launch shifting half as many copies as it did in the three years it was on Steam Early Access.

Instead, Acid Wizard's motive was a lot more sincere: it wanted people who couldn't afford the game to have access to it now, then hopefully pay the developer back when they could afford it. Furthermore, it sought to put an end to exploitative key reselling sites that operate through nefarious means.

This Pirate Bay offering wasn't necessarily a planned decision, but it came about when the developer started getting an influx of scam emails requesting codes for giveaways. "People claim to be a YouTuber or blogger and ask for a Steam key," the studio wrote in an imgur post about its generous offering. "That key then gets sold through a shady platform. To be honest, we're fed up with it. This practice makes it impossible for us to do any giveaways or send keys to people who actually don't have the money to play Darkwood."

This frustration was further exacerbated when Acid Wizard looked at the reasons people were asking for refunds on Steam. "When we read the explanation from someone who wrote that he needed the refund because he didn't want his parents to be stressed out when seeing the bill at the end of the month... well, it made us feel quite bad," the developer lamented. "So we decided to do something about it!"

"If you don't have the money and want to play the game, we have a safe torrent on the Pirate Bay of the latest version of Darkwood (1.0 hotfix 3), completely DRM-free," the studio stated.

"There's no catch, no added pirate hats for characters or anything like that. We have just one request: if you like Darkwood and want us to continue making games, consider buying it in the future, maybe on a sale, through Steam, GOG or Humble Store."

"But please, please, don't buy it through any key reselling site," Acid Wizard pleaded. "By doing that, you're just feeding the cancer that is leeching off this industry."

This offering has only been available for a few hours, so it's unclear how it will affect sales going forward, but when asked about its success so far Acid Wizard's Maciej Górny told Eurogamer: "We've reached the 12th spot on the Global Top Sellers list on Steam at some point and we're staying on the first pages of that list."

"Overall, we're very content, it's been a tough and rewarding ride!"

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This isn't the first time a developer has publicly uploaded their own game on Pirate Bay. We previously saw McPixel creator Mikolaj "Sos" Kaminski and Hotline Miami developer Dennaton Games do the same.

If you'd like to pick it up through official means, Darkwood is currently available on Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store, where it's going for £11.99 / $14.99. We liked its Early Access release, and that was three years ago. It's only gotten better since.