[matthewrobertso]

Releasing a game on a console is an involved process with many steps and hoops to jump through. It is much easier to release a game on PC. I haven't looked into the statistics but it is my understanding that the large majority indie games release first on PC before being ported to consoles due to the barrier to entry.

Emulators might hurt developers who treat being console exclusive as a form of DRM or have exclusivity agreements with console manufacturers if their work becomes wildly pirated. I don't track what is pirated or how frequently, nor do I track game developers closely, are there examples of this happening to developers who have shut down?

[bscphil]

> It is much easier to release a game on PC.

That's true. By giving a console example I was just trying to talk about piracy in a way relevant to the emulator topic. You could make exactly the same point about piracy of PC games, though. Many indie PC games don't have DRM.

[matthewrobertso]

I think for most indie developers piracy is free word of mouth advertising, similar to the shareware model. Hopefully when their work is widely pirated developers can turn the attention into sales. I agree it would be very tragic if people lost their jobs due to rampant piracy.

To ask a difficult question though, are there actually any contemporary indie PC games that have been massively pirated to the point where the developer had to fire an intern?