TLDR; The devs released the ‘cracked’ version themselves on various file sharing sites. Their crack had an extra event though; after a while of playing, your studio would inevitably go bankrupt due to video game piracy, forcing a loss. This only occurs in the cracked version as well, so players complaining about it automatically outed themselves as pirates.
One of my favourites is Game Dev Tycoon.
TLDR; The devs released the ‘cracked’ version themselves on various file sharing sites. Their crack had an extra event though; after a while of playing, your studio would inevitably go bankrupt due to video game piracy, forcing a loss. This only occurs in the cracked version as well, so players complaining about it automatically outed themselves as pirates.
Kind of an ironic measure from people who ripped essentially their entire gameplay loop off of earlier games like Game Dev Story.