They Pirated His Game, But This Developer is Giving Tech Support Anyway

Jonatan Soderstrom, one of the duo behind the fantastic Hotline Miami, should be the last person on Earth giving advice to people pirating his games. So it’s weird/nice to see him actually being one of the first.

On the game’s thread at torrent site The Pirate Bay (and spotted by PC Gamer), Soderstrom has dropped in to address complaints—yes, pirates complain about the product they’ve stolen—and give advice for people on how to get the game running.

Hey there!

I’m Jonatan Soderstrom, me and my friend Dennis Wedin made this game. We’re working on an update that hopefully will take care of any/all bugs, and we’ll try to do some extra polish in the next few days. Would be great if you could update the torrent when the patch is out! It’d be great if people get to play it without any bugs popping up.

Hope everyone will enjoy the game!

For the “Error defining an external function.” problem, try restarting your system and play again, it can pop up when your computer has been running for a while. We’ll try to figure out if there’s more to it than that.

While helping out pirates may seem a fairly counter-productive thing to engage in, seems that unlike someone who makes a six-figure salary, he can at least sympathise with the plight of the broke freeloader:

I don't really want people to pirate Hotline Miami, but I understand if they do. I've been broke the last couple of months. It sucks.

— Jonatan Söderström (@cactusquid) October 25, 2012

And I definitely want people to experience the game the way it's meant to be experienced. No matter how they got a hold of it.

— Jonatan Söderström (@cactusquid) October 25, 2012

Hotline Miami dev endorses Pirate Bay torrent of his own game, provides helpful suggestions [PC Gamer]