Hotline Miami pirated ‘to extraordinary levels’

Indie shooter Hotline Miami has been pirated at extraordinary levels, the project manager on the title has said.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Graeme Struthers said that the title had been torrented illegally online at a staggering level, which was also not helped by the small size of the game.

"It has been torrented to such a staggering level, and given the file size of it, I mean, you can’t really be surprised, right?” said Struthers.

“You could pass this thing around on the world’s smallest memory stick. So it has been torrented to extraordinary levels."

Despite being pirated to such a large extent, Hotline Miami has managed to sell 130,000 copies.

One of the game’s developers, Jonatan Soderstrom, has previously spoken of his willingness to lend support to game pirates, having taken to a thread on a torrent site asking users to update the torrent once a new patch was released to fix various bugs.

Soderstrom later said on Twitter that although he obviously didn’t want people to pirate the title, he wanted users to experience the game as he intended, regardless of how they acquired the shooter.

"That’s what he’s like," said Struthers.

"He just felt he didn’t want people playing the buggy version of his game however they got it. He wanted them to get the patch. He basically said, ‘I’m not going to criticise this, it’s a fact of life. It would be nice if guys could find it within themselves to pay for it, but that’s the world I’m in, so you know, you just have to take it for what it is.’"