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A game developer has come up with a novel way to prevent the piracy of their new game - give it away for free!

Game bundle sales site IndieGala has recently branched into game development, and their upcoming game, Die Young, has received some unfortunately attention from game pirates. When IndieGala discovered a pirated version of the game, with the Steam copy protection cracked, being made available on piracy sites, the developer took action.

Via a blog post, IndieGala addressed the piracy issue and offered a novel solution by giving away a DRM-free copy of the game for all who were tempted by the pirated version.

"If you don’t have enough money but you want to play the game, or if you simply want to check if your hardware is able to run it smoothly, we’re providing safe, DRM-free access to Die Young (Version 0.4.37.18) on IndieGala until December 31st 2017," the blog post read.

IndieGala says they're doing this because they don't want gamers to access the pirated version due to potential cybersecurity threats and they also want to ensure even pirates are part of the gaming conversation, and not "alienated" from developers. By having a legit free copy floating around, IndieGala says they can still get valuable feedback from gamers, even if they did not choose to pay for a copy.

The game itself is also available via Steam's Early Access, with gamers getting access to frequently updated beta versions of the game prior to its full release. The free version will only be a static release, meaning it won't be updated, but it is a relatively recent (as at the time of this story) version (version 0.4.37.18).

The free version is available to download here (free login required).

[via IndieGala, PCGamesN]