Four Quarters, the developer behind the highly regarded deck-building roguelike Loop Hero, is encouraging players to pirate its game if they can’t find any legal means of purchasing it amid the ongoing sanctions placed on Russia after its military invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions placed on Russia have made purchasing games on online storefronts like Steam very difficult for Russian gamers. When concerned players took to VK, a Russian social media site, with questions on how to purchase Loop Hero and support the Russian indie game developers amid the sanctions, Four Quarters responded in a post on Sunday by encouraging players to “raise the pirate flag” and torrent the game instead. In the post, Four Quarters linked players to a torrent version of Loop Hero on RuTracker, Russia’s largest BitTorrent tracker website, and reminded players to use a VPN as well.
Kotaku reached out to Four Quarters for comment but did not receive a response by time of publication.
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The war between Russia and Ukraine, which Four Quarters denounced in a pinned Twitter post, negatively impacts Russian devs as well as Russian gamers. While gamers are not able to purchase games online, Russian devs haven’t been able to cash out any payments earned through Steam. This is due to the storefront halting all bank payments to Russia and Ukraine. Players on VK, seemingly aware of this fact, offered to send the Loop Hero devs direct donations. However, Four Quarters doubled down on its stance in a VK post yesterday, telling players, “There is nothing wrong with torrents.”
“We are very grateful for your support, but the truth is that everything is fine with us,” Four Quarters posted, according to a Google translation of the post. “Send this support to your family and friends at this difficult time.”