I grew up as the youngest sibling in a huge family. We played games on a single family computer we had to share between all of us. There were more important things our parents could spend money on so, of course, pretty much all of the games were pirated without their knowledge. The only ones that weren't were free to play.
Back then vpns weren't popular, so every time you illegally downloaded a game, you didn't know if you would send your parents to jail. But you were a dumb kid who pretty much just discovered gambling and was willing to risk your familys financial wellbeing for some free games.
Rarely you would find the greatest of all developers. The ones that publish a game good enough people are willing to pay for it but also hide a free fully playable version on a secondary site that you only find when looking for a cracked version. Not a demo, not an alpha, but the full game.
I just released my first game, and althought it's not the best, I still wanted to do the same thing those developers did for me back then.
I know there's a 1% chance of me convincing you, but if any of the 5 people reading this are indie devs please consider hiding a free version of your game somewhere on the internet. 99% of your customers won't ever know that it exists, and the ones who do, would pirate it anyway.
