Serious Sam: Double D dev makes plea to pirates

Late last month, the side-scrolling shooter Serious Sam: Double D debuted on PC downloadable storefronts and was promptly made available through shadier avenues of the Internet. According to Mommy's Best Games developer Nathan Fouts, pirates had cracked and distributed the game through their own channels within five hours of Double D going up on Steam.

In a post on the Mommy's Best Games blog, Fouts called it "flattering" that there was enough interest in the game for it to be cracked so quickly, but expressed concern about the impact piracy has had on the bottom line. As a result, he pleaded with those who downloaded the cracked version to either buy a legitimate copy or donate directly to the developer through a PayPal button in the blog post.

"Mommy's Best Games is a very small company of passionate developers, but passion doesn't manifest peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on our plates," Fouts said. "We also need money in exchange for our fun games--if we miss out on a few hundred or thousand sales of the game due to pirating it's a BIG DEAL for us." (Emphasis in original.)

Speaking with GameSpot, Fouts said he'd prefer to ask those users to contribute nicely "rather than throw a fit."

"I figure devs complain all the time about pirates, but honestly I wanted this to be more a reminder to pay if you liked it rather than a 'Don't steal my game, you owe me money!' sort of reprimanding," Fouts said.

An Xbox 360 edition of Serious Sam: Double D has also been announced, but it doesn't have a release window.